Developing with Docker containers

Published at Dec 31, 2018, updated at Sep 13, 2021

#containers

Please note

This article guide is intended for advanced users with knowledge of creating and running Docker containers locally. If you are new to containers or Docker, please refer to the Docker & K8s 101 article.

As a programmer I often use many technologies and frameworks. It’s a pain installing all the different dependencies, and that’s why Docker has become such a valuable tool, not only in production.

I’ll start with analyzing Dockerfiles and then continue to talk about developing with containers.

Dockerfile Best Practices

Every line in your Dockerfile is an independent cached layer, so it’s important to understand the mechanics of cache-busting and manual garbage collection.

Separate Dependency Step

Almost every project has dependencies. It’s important to separate the installation of these dependencies from your actual project, and have it run before your own project installation. To understand why, follow to the next section on leveraging docker cache.

Here are a few examples of dependency separation in a Dockerfile files:

Go

dockerfile

FROM golang:alpine

# Dependency installation
RUN go get -u -v github.com/golang/dep/cmd/dep
RUN go get -d -v golang.org/x/net/html

# Copy project files and compile project
COPY . /go/src/github.com/golang/example/myapp
RUN go install github.com/golang/example/myapp

Python 3

dockerfile

FROM python:3.7-slim
WORKDIR /app

# Dependency installation
COPY requirements.txt .
RUN pip install --no-cache-dir -r requirements.txt

# Copy project files and run setup.py
COPY . .
RUN pip install -e .

NodeJS

dockerfile

FROM node:10.13-alpine
WORKDIR /app

# Dependency installation
COPY package.json .
RUN yarn install

# Copy project files
COPY . .

Leverage Docker Cache

Cached layers offer great speed improvement for continuous builds. Of course, your own code changes every single build, but your dependencies don’t change so often.

That is why the order in which you write your Dockerfile has much meaning. Docker will detect changes, whether it’s a change in the Dockerfile itself, or a file change when using ADD or COPY. Once a change is detected, all lower layers will be rebuilt, meaning a change in a layer causes all other layers below it to lose their cache.

Some people would argue that using cached layers isn’t sterile. If you really want continuous-integration to slowly re-build every layer in each build, you can use the --no-cache flag with docker build. However I advise on still leveraging Docker’s cache in development.

Garbage Collection

With Docker, each layer can introduce new files that will weigh in the image size forever. This is why projects like Makisu appeared, offering more control for layer commits.

Back to Docker, each layer has a size that weighs in forever. For example, the following example is BAD practice of installing cython & ujson:

dockerfile

# Dockerfile

FROM python:3.7-slim
RUN apt-get update
RUN apt-get install -y --no-install-recommends build-essential
RUN pip install cython ujson
RUN apt-get purge -y build-essential
RUN apt-get autoremove -y
RUN apt-get autoclean -y
RUN rm -rf /var/lib/{apt,dpkg,cache,log} /tmp/* ~/.cache
RUN rm -rf /usr/src/python /usr/share/doc /usr/share/man
RUN rm -f /var/cache/apt/archives/*.deb

If we inspect our image after a docker build -t test1 ., we can see each layer’s size:

bash

$ docker images
REPOSITORY  TAG      IMAGE ID       SIZE
test1       latest   72f07c204ff6   375MB

$ docker history test1
IMAGE             CREATED BY                                      SIZE
72f07c204ff6      /bin/sh -c rm -f /var/cache/apt/archives/*.d…   0B
14600e43ad38      /bin/sh -c rm -rf /usr/src/python /usr/share…   0B
a4fe8c374984      /bin/sh -c rm -rf /var/lib/{apt,dpkg,cache,l…   0B
b2b4c3b72b25      /bin/sh -c apt-get autoclean -y                 0B
4f0ce2c2e625      /bin/sh -c apt-get autoremove -y                1.36MB
b529b6b0c31c      /bin/sh -c apt-get purge -y build-essential     1.38MB
3e670b77c1ac      /bin/sh -c pip install cython ujson             17.7MB
2d3e5fe7403b      /bin/sh -c apt-get install -y build-essential   195MB
4df21d8298f1      /bin/sh -c apt-get update                       16.3MB

We in-fact created many layers that are like snapshots in time. If we have combined them, or “squashed” them, the overall layer size will be more efficient, aggregated. Consider this change:

dockerfile

# Dockerfile

FROM python:3.7-slim
RUN apt-get update && 
  apt-get install -y --no-install-recommends build-essential && 
  pip install cython ujson && 
  apt-get purge -y build-essential && 
  apt-get autoremove -y && 
  apt-get autoclean -y && 
  rm -rf /var/lib/{apt,dpkg,cache,log} /tmp/* ~/.cache && 
  rm -rf /usr/src/python /usr/share/doc /usr/share/man && 
  rm -f /var/cache/apt/archives/*.deb

After building this again, we can see our single layer has been really cleaned!

bash

$ docker images
REPOSITORY  TAG      IMAGE ID       SIZE
test2       latest   457ed321603d   189MB
test1       latest   72f07c204ff6   375MB

$ docker history test2
IMAGE             CREATED BY                                      SIZE
457ed321603d      /bin/sh -c apt-get update &&   apt-get insta…   46.1MB

As you can see, we’ve improved the image size by 186mb by squashing multiple layers into one.

10 Tips for Better `Dockerfile`s

Combine RUN statements.
Clean after yourself.
Don’t copy your entire application directory in one line. Separate the dependencies before.
Use .dockerignore file to reduce the context Docker needs to copy.
Use COPY instead of ADD. COPY is simple, ADD has some magic under-hood.
Create a non-root user. A good preventive security practice.
Don’t run multiple services in one container.
Don’t use external services during build e.g. database migration.
Declare cheap commands as late as possible (EXPOSE, ENV, ARG, etc.).
Pin software versions. Never, ever, use :latest tags. It can lead to unexpected disasters.

3rd-Party Service Dependencies and Docker Compose

Programming today involves a developer to use many persistence services such as MySQL, PostgreSQL, Redis, Elasticsearch, Kafka, RabbitMQ etc.

Running all these services on your personal workstation can be very cumbersome and complex. Just imagine project A needs MongoDB 2.x and project B needs MongoDB 4.x — this used to be a real pain until Docker made it real easy.

Docker-compose is an invaluable tool for development, it defines a composition of services that can be created & destroyed in matter of seconds. Let’s review the following example of a typical docker-compose.yml file:

yaml

version: '2'

services:
  db:
    image: postgres:11-alpine
    container_name: myapp-db
    ports:
      - 5432:5432
    environment:
      POSTGRES_DB: myappdb
      POSTGRES_USER: bob
      POSTGRES_PASSWORD: thedog

  redis:
    image: redis:5-alpine
    container_name: myapp-db
    ports:
      - 6379:6379

Now a simple docker-compose up will run PostgreSQL & Redis in the exact versions we need and accessible on ports 5432 and 6379.

If your project has a Dockerfile, we can automate our project as-well:

yaml

version: '2'

services:
  myapp:
    build:
      context: .
      args:
        APP_DEBUG: 'true'
        APP_ENV: 'development'
        DATABASE_URL: 'postgresql://bob:thedog@db/myappdb'
    image: myapp/api
    container_name: myapp-api
    ports:
      - 8080:8080
    depends_on:
      - db
      - redis
    volumes:
      - .:/app

  db:
    image: postgres:11-alpine
    container_name: myapp-db
    ports:
      - 5432:5432
    environment:
      POSTGRES_DB: myappdb
      POSTGRES_USER: bob
      POSTGRES_PASSWORD: thedog

  redis:
    image: redis:5-alpine
    container_name: myapp-db
    ports:
      - 6379:6379

With the above docker-compose.yml file, running docker-compose build will build your project’s image via Dockerfile in current directory, and running docker-compose up will run your project and be accessible via port 8080.

Docker-compose is like porcelain on-top of docker commands, it’s written in Python and is open-sourced.

Find pre-built images in Docker Hub.

Developing Alongside Containers

So we’ve learned the power of containers in development by spinning up quickly 3rd-party services and our own projects for usage, but what about actual development? During which we make a lot of changes and restart our application to reload the changes repeatedly…

Writing your own code and using containers as runtime can surprisingly ease development in certain situations.

Moreover, in certain ecosystems such as Python, it is necessary to manage your dependencies in a “virtual-environment”. Using containers, you can eliminate this aspect of working on Python projects, as containers already provide an isolated state of your application.

Exercise A1: Python Container with Debugging Support

Let’s take Python for example. In-order to reload your code changes you must reload your runtime server. Many frameworks and interpreters have a reload option, e.g. bottle, flask, gunicorn, etc. However we can achieve this with restarting containers as-well.

Consider this application:

Create a new directory, and then inside a file called app.py with following:

import sys
import signal
import falcon


class HealthResource:
    def on_get(self, req, resp):
        resp.media = {'status': 'OK', 'health': 1.0}


def sigterm_handler(signum, frame):
    sys.exit(1)


def main(args):
    from wsgiref import simple_server
    signal.signal(signal.SIGTERM, sigterm_handler)
    httpd = simple_server.make_server('0.0.0.0', 8080, api)
    httpd.serve_forever()


api = falcon.API()
api.add_route('/healthz', HealthResource())

if __name__ == '__main__':
    main(sys.argv[1:])

A Dockerfile:

dockerfile

FROM python:3.7-slim
RUN pip install --no-cache-dir falcon
ENTRYPOINT ["python", "app.py"]
WORKDIR /app
COPY . .

And a docker-compose.yml:

yaml

version: '2'

services:
  api:
    build: .
    image: myapp/api
    container_name: myapp-api
    ports:
      - 8080:8080
    volumes:
      - .:/app

Let’s build our image:

bash

$ docker-compose build
$ docker-compose up -d
Starting myapp-api ... done

With curl or HTTPie let’s send a /healthz request:

bash

$ curl localhost:8080/healthz
{"status": "OK", "health": 1.0}

Hooray.

pdb is the most commonly-used debugger for Python because it is built into the standard library. Let’s add a breakpoint and see what happens:

diff

class HealthResource:
    def on_get(self, req, resp):
+       import pdb; pdb.set_trace()
        resp.media = { 'status': 'OK', 'health': 1.0 }

Reload the container and run curl again:

bash

$ docker-compose restart
Restarting myapp-api ... done

$ curl localhost:8080/healthz
A server error occurred.  Please contact the administrator.

Oh, oh. We have an error. Let’s examine the logs with docker logs -f myapp-api

log

172.23.0.1 - - [01/Jan/2019 19:53:44] "GET /healthz HTTP/1.1" 200 31
> /app/app.py(9)on_get()
-> resp.media = {'status': 'OK', 'health': 1.0}
172.23.0.1 - - [01/Jan/2019 20:00:39] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 404 0
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.7/wsgiref/handlers.py", line 137, in run
    self.result = application(self.environ, self.start_response)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.7/site-packages/falcon/api.py", line 244, in __call__
    responder(req, resp, **params)
  File "app.py", line 9, in on_get
    resp.media = {'status': 'OK', 'health': 1.0}
  File "app.py", line 9, in on_get
    resp.media = {'status': 'OK', 'health': 1.0}
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.7/bdb.py", line 88, in trace_dispatch
    return self.dispatch_line(frame)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.7/bdb.py", line 113, in dispatch_line
    if self.quitting: raise BdbQuit
bdb.BdbQuit

We need an interactive tty in-order for pdb to interact with us at the breakpoint. Let’s stop this container and run our api interactively:

bash

$ docker-compose stop
Stopping myapp-api ... done

$ docker-compose run --rm --service-ports api

On a different terminal, let’s run curl again:

bash

curl localhost:8080/healthz

This time, the request is frozen, and the terminal window running docker-compose initiated an interactive shell:

log

> /app/app.py(9)on_get()
-> resp.media = {'status': 'OK', 'health': 1.0}
(Pdb) list
  4
  5
  6     class HealthResource:
  7         def on_get(self, req, resp):
  8             import pdb; pdb.set_trace()
  9  ->         resp.media = {'status': 'OK', 'health': 1.0}
 10
 11
 12     def sigterm_handler(signum, frame):
 13         sys.exit(1)
 14

(Pdb) args
self = <__main__.HealthResource object at 0x7f82b947dd30>
req = <Request: GET 'http://localhost:8080/healthz'>
resp = <Response: 200 OK>

(Pdb) cont

Excellent! We can run containers with debugging support, but it’s quite tiresome to constantly restart our containers.

Exercise A2: Auto-Reloading

For auto-reloading our containers, we can use a special little tool called entr. You can install it with Homebrew on macOS:

bash

$ brew install entr
…
==> Pouring entr-4.1.mojave.bottle.tar.gz
🍺  /usr/local/Cellar/entr/4.1: 7 files, 40.7KB

entr helps running arbitrary commands when files change. This will help restarting container:

bash

$ find . -name '*py' | entr -r docker-compose up
Starting myapp-api ... done
Attaching to myapp-api

Now let’s change OK to SEVERE in app.py, to see if container restarts:

diff

class HealthResource:
    def on_get(self, req, resp):
-       import pdb; pdb.set_trace()
-       resp.media = {'status': 'OK', 'health': 1.0}
+       resp.media = {'status': 'SEVERE', 'health': 1.0}

You will notice that our container has been restarted:

bash

$ find . -name '*py' | entr -r docker-compose up
Starting myapp-api ... done
Attaching to myapp-api
Gracefully stopping... (press Ctrl+C again to force)
Stopping myapp-api ... done
Starting myapp-api ... done
Attaching to myapp-api

On a different terminal, let’s test it:

bash

$ curl localhost:8080/healthz
{"status": "SEVERE", "health": 1.0}

Hooray, no manual restarts! :smiley:

The Silver Searcher is a much better tool than find, we can use it as-well:

bash

ag -l --py | entr -r docker-compose up

Exercise A3: Automating Docker-Compose

make is an old trusted build system. We can easily abuse it to make our work-flow with docker-compose even easier.

Consider the following Makefile:

makefile

default: menu

menu:
	@echo "# MYAPP Makefile"
	@echo
	@echo "## docker-compose shortcuts:"
	@echo
	@echo "  * make bash - Execute bash in 'api' container"
	@echo "  * make clean - Delete composed container and lock files"
	@echo "  * make debug - Run app with an interactive tty"
	@echo "  * make develop - Install development requirements"
	@echo "  * make install - Build and create image"
	@echo "  * make logs - Tail app containers logs"
	@echo "  * make ps - List all containers including load-stats"
	@echo "  * make start - Start containers"
	@echo "  * make stop - Stop composed containers"
	@echo "  * make test - Run tests within 'api' container"
	@echo "  * make watch - Watch file changes and restarts 'api' container"
	@echo

bash:
	docker-compose exec api bash

clean: stop
	docker-compose down; 
	find . -name __pycache__ -type d | xargs rm -rf; 
	rm -rf *.egg-info dist .cache

debug:
	docker-compose run --rm --service-ports api

develop: install
	docker-compose exec api pip install -r dev-requirements.txt

install: stop
	docker-compose build

logs:
	docker-compose logs --tail 15 -f

ps:
	@docker-compose ps
	@echo
	@docker stats --no-stream $(docker-compose ps | grep '^w' | awk '{print $1}')

start:
	docker-compose up -d

stop:
	docker-compose stop -t 5

test:
	docker-compose exec api py.test -v -s

watch:
	find . -name '*py' | entr -r docker-compose up --build api

.PHONY: menu bash clean debug develop install logs ps start stop test

Once saved, as Makefile, you can run work-flow commands quickly, for example:

bash

make install
make start
make stop
make watch

Pretty useful when starting to learn docker/compose, it serves as a reference card as-well.

Service Discovery

Let’s introduce another service to our composition. This time, we’ll use NodeJS to create a new service that will communicate with our existing Python service.

Exercise B1: NodeJS API Service Container

Before continuing, let’s stop any running containers and create a python directory and move Dockerfile and app.py there:

Directory structure

bash

$ docker-compose down
$ mkdir python
$ mv Dockerfile app.py python/
$ tree  # (Install with `brew install tree` on macOS)
.
├── Makefile
├── docker-compose.yml
└── python  # ← (Our new directory for the Python service)
   ├── Dockerfile
   └── app.py

Create another directory called node, and create a index.js file inside it with the following content:

const express = require('express')
const app = express()
const port = 3000

app.get('/', (req, res) => res.send('Hello World!'))
app.get('/healthz', (req, res) => res.send({ status: 'OK', health: 1.0 }))
app.listen(port, () => console.log(`Example app listening on port ${port}!`))

And this package.json:

json

{
  "name": "exercise-nodejs",
  "version": "1.0.0",
  * [ ] "main": "index.js",
  "dependencies": {
    "express": "^4.16.4"
  }
}

Finally, let’s create a Dockerfile:

dockerfile

FROM node:10.13-alpine
WORKDIR /app
CMD ["node", "index.js"]
COPY package.json .
RUN yarn install
COPY . .

Now let’s teach our docker-compose.yml where to find both services:

yaml

version: '2'

services:

  acme-python:
    build:
      context: python
    image: acme/python
    container_name: acme-python
    ports:
      - 8080:8080
    volumes:
      - ./python:/app

  acme-node:
    build:
      context: node
    image: acme/node
    container_name: acme-node
    ports:
      - 3000:3000
    volumes:
      - ./node:/app

Finally, let’s build our two projects:

bash

docker-compose build
docker-compose up

Both our services are available to HTTP requests:

bash

$ curl localhost:8080
{"status": "OK", "health": 1.0}

$ curl localhost:3000
{"status":"OK","health":1}

But how could they communicate with each other?

Exercise B2: Docker Service Discovery

Docker has an embedded DNS server that helps with discovering other containers in the same Docker network.

While your docker-compose is up and running, execute this command:

bash

$ docker-compose exec acme-node wget -qO- http://acme-python:8080/healthz
{"status": "OK", "health": 1.0}

What happened here is we’ve executed wget inside the NodeJS container, and called acme-python as the host. This utilizes Docker’s DNS server and load-balancing and will match our Python container internal network IP.

Lessons Learned

Containers can improve our development work-flow. From dependency isolation and caching, to spinning up complex distributed application schemas locally.
Leveraging Docker cache layers is a tremendous time-saver. Puritans won’t argue otherwise in aspect of day-to-day development.
Combining RUN commands in the project’s Dockerfile and cleaning garbage in the same line will reduce image size significantly.
Using a docker-compose.yml file in a every project introduces a reproducible set of distributed 3rd-party services your project needs during development. New developer ramp-up time decreases dramatically, and other teams will quickly spawn your project up to freely use.
Containers are not only for production. They offer a separate dimension of abilities & features that can prove worthy for development & debugging cycles.
make is an extremely popular build automation tool pre-installed in many Unix environments. It can also be used as a shortcut recipe for installing, building, and distributing in each project as a Makefile file.

Developing with Docker containers

Please note

Dockerfile Best Practices

Separate Dependency Step

Go

Python 3

NodeJS

Leverage Docker Cache

Garbage Collection

10 Tips for Better Dockerfiles

3rd-Party Service Dependencies and Docker Compose

Developing Alongside Containers

Exercise A1: Python Container with Debugging Support

Exercise A2: Auto-Reloading

Exercise A3: Automating Docker-Compose

Service Discovery

Exercise B1: NodeJS API Service Container

Directory structure

Exercise B2: Docker Service Discovery

Lessons Learned

Related Articles

10 Tips for Better `Dockerfile`s