docker-nodejs

Node.js is a JavaScript-based platform for server-side and networking applications.

Description

This image is based on the popular Alpine Linux project, available in the alpine official image. Alpine Linux is much smaller than most distribution base images (~5MB), and thus leads to much slimmer images in general.

Currently, the node version is v8.9.4 for the default tag latest. And I have replaced npm v5.6.0 with yarn v1.3.2.

Build

You can pull the image from hub.docker.com.

$ docker pull bingozb/nodejs

Or, you can build with source repository by yourself. It will take a lot of time.

$ git clone https://github.com/bingozb/docker-nodejs.git
$ cd docker-nodejs
$ docker build -t bingozb/nodejs .

Usage

As we know, the node.js project usually deploy with thus steps.

$ yarn install
$ yarn run build
$ yarn start

I recommend separating build and deployment. It is recommended to use two hosts, one for build and one for deployment.

Host	Job	Command
Host A	build	yarn install && yarn run build
Host B	deploy	yarn start

Host A

First, put your node.js project in your host machine via git or scp and so on, and run the container with the command install and run build.

$ sudo docker run --rm -v /path/to/yourproject:/app bingozb/nodejs install
$ sudo docker run --rm -v /path/to/yourproject:/app bingozb/nodejs run build

Once the execution is complete, you will find a new folder node_modules and a new file yarn.lock in your project.

Then, copy all of your project to Host B. You can do some compression to make the file transfer faster.

e.g.:

$ cd /path/to/yourproject
$ touch app.tar.gz && tar --exclude=app.tar.gz -zcf app.tar.gz .
$ scp app.tar.gz user@HostB:/path/to/yourproject

Host B

Decompress first, if necessary.

$ tar -xzf /path/to/yourproject/app.tar.gz -C /path/to/yourproject/ 
$ rm -f /path/to/yourproject/app.tar.gz

Then run a container:

$ sudo docker run --restart always -d --name yourapp \
-p 3000:3000 \
-v /path/to/yourproject:/app \
bingozb/nodejs

After that, you can access your project with Host B and 3000 port.

One Host

If you think it's not necessary to use two hosts, you can certainly do it on the same host.

$ sudo docker run --rm -v /path/to/yourproject:/app bingozb/nodejs install
$ sudo docker run --rm -v /path/to/yourproject:/app bingozb/nodejs run build
$ sudo docker run --restart always -d --name yourapp -p 3000:3000 -v /path/to/yourproject:/app bingozb/nodejs

Why do we need to separate build and deployment?

It depends on the actual situation. As for me, there is dozens of projects in my machine. If do the build at the same time, it could lead to a shortage of resources. Therefore, we have two hosts, one for build and one for deployment. And the host which for build was using the jenkins service to do the building job.