Complete Guide for Linking Nodejs MongoDB Without Docker Compose

Prerequisite

Clone Nodejs project form here for getting started quickly (You Can user your project if you have already created)
Docker Installed on your machine docker
Basic Commandline knowledge
Basic Docker Knowledge

Steps

Create Dockerfile
Build Image using Dockerfile
Use Docker Networks for multi-container setup
1. Creating Network
2. Launching Mongo Image into Network
3. Launching App into Network
Launching App into Network

Create Dockerfile for Nodejs

# Pull Nodejs Image from Docker Hub
FROM node:12

# Make working Directory
RUN mkdir -p /home/node/app/node_modules && chown -R node:node /home/node/app

# cd into working directory
WORKDIR /home/node/app

# Copy package.json file in directory
COPY package*.json ./

# Set user
USER node

# Run npm install
RUN npm install

# Copy all Code to Directory
COPY . .

# Exposing PORT 8000 - (Expose port on which your app is Running)
EXPOSE 8000

# Start Node Appliction
CMD ["npm", "start"]

Build Image using Dockerfile

Change directory into the folder containing Dockerfile and execute following command to build image tagged with name node-api

# Flag -t is for tagging image (optional)
docker build -t node-api .

Use Docker networks for multi-container setup

Creating Network

Assuming you want to name your network node-network, run this command:

docker network create --driver=bridge node-network

Verify by getting node-network details or list of all networks:

docker network inspect node-network
docker network ls

You would see something like this:

docker network ls
NETWORK ID          NAME                  DRIVER              SCOPE
e9f653fffa25        node-network          bridge              local
cd768d87acb1        bridge                bridge              local
0cd7db8df819        host                  host                local
8f4db39bd202        none                  null                local

Launching Mongo Image into Network

Next, launch vanilla mongo image in node-network (or whatever name you used for your network). The name of the container node-mongo will become the host name to access it from our app:

docker run --rm -it --net=node-network --name node-mongo mongo

Note: If you didn’t have mongo image, Docker will download it for you. It’ll happen just once, the first time.

Leave this mongo running. Open a new terminal.

Launching App into Network

This is my command to launch my Node app in a production mode and connect to my mongo container which is in the same network (node-network):

docker run --rm -t --net=node-network --name node-api -e NODE_ENV=production -e MONGO_URI="mongodb://node-mongo:27017/node-boilerplate" -p 80:8000 {Your node-api image ID}

Content {} must be replaced with your app image ID from the previous step when you did docker build .. If you forgot the app image ID, then run docker images and look up the ID.

Inspecting Network

docker network inspect node-network

Inspecting your network with docker network inspect banking-api-network will show you have 2 running containers there:

 ...
        "Containers": {
            "02ff9bb083484a0fe2abb63ec79e0a78f9cac0d31440374f9bb2ee8995930414": {
                "Name": "node-mongo",
                "EndpointID": "0fa2612ebc14ed7af097f7287e013802e844005fe66a979dfe6cfb1c08336080",
                "MacAddress": "02:42:ac:12:00:02",
                "IPv4Address": "172.18.0.2/16",
                "IPv6Address": ""
            },
            "3836f4042c5d3b16a565b1f68eb5690e062e5472a09caf563bc9f11efd9ab167": {
                "Name": "node-api",
                "EndpointID": "d6ae871a94553dab1fcd6660185be4029a28c80c893ef1450df8cad20add583e",
                "MacAddress": "02:42:ac:12:00:03",
                "IPv4Address": "172.18.0.3/16",
                "IPv6Address": ""
            }
        },
    ...

shekhar-raval / node-mongo-docker