There are two main ways you can use Docker with Meteor apps. They are:
- Build a Docker image for your app
- Running a Meteor bundle with Docker
MeteorD supports these two ways. Let's see how to use MeteorD
With this method, your app will be converted into a Docker image. Then you can simply run that image.
For that, you can use meteorhacks/meteord:onbuild
as your base image. Magically, that's only thing you have to do. Here's how to do it:
Add following Dockerfile
into the root of your app (CURRENTLY NOT SUPPORTED here)
FROM steffow/meteord-node4:onbuild
Then you can build the docker image with:
docker build -t yourname/app .
Then you can run your meteor image with
docker run -d \
-e ROOT_URL=http://yourapp.com \
-e MONGO_URL=mongodb://url \
-e MONGO_OPLOG_URL=mongodb://oplog_url \
-p 8080:80 \
yourname/app
Then you can access your app from the port 8080 of the host system.
So, with the above method, MeteorD will download and install Meteor each and every time. That's bad especially in development. So, we've a solution for that. Simply use meteorhacks/meteord:devbuild
as your base image.
WARNING: Don't use
meteorhacks/meteord:devbuild
for your final build. If you used it, your image will carry the Meteor distribution as well. As a result of that, you'll end up with an image with ~700 MB.
Steffo: this is what I really support here.
For this you can directly use the MeteorD to run your meteor bundle. MeteorD can accept your bundle either from a local mount or from the web. Let's see:
docker run -d \
-e ROOT_URL=http://yourapp.com \
-e MONGO_URL=mongodb://url \
-e MONGO_OPLOG_URL=mongodb://oplog_url \
-v /mybundle_dir:/bundle \
-p 8080:80 \
steffow/meteord-node4:base
With this method, MeteorD looks for the tarball version of the meteor bundle. So, you should build the meteor bundle for os.linux.x86_64
and put it inside the /bundle
volume. This is how you can build a meteor bundle.
meteor build --architecture=os.linux.x86_64 ./
You can also simply give URL of the tarball with BUNDLE_URL
environment variable. Then MeteorD will fetch the bundle and run it. This is how to do it:
docker run -d \
-e ROOT_URL=http://yourapp.com \
-e MONGO_URL=mongodb://url \
-e MONGO_OPLOG_URL=mongodb://oplog_url \
-e BUNDLE_URL=http://mybundle_url_at_s3.tar.gz \
-p 8080:80 \
meteorhacks/meteord:base
docker-compose.yml
dashboard:
image: yourrepo/yourapp
ports:
- "80:80"
links:
- mongo
environment:
- MONGO_URL=mongodb://mongo/yourapp
- ROOT_URL=http://yourapp.com
- MAIL_URL=smtp://some.mailserver.com:25
mongo:
image: mongo:latest
When using Docker Compose to start a Meteor container with a Mongo container as well, we need to wait for the database to start up before we try to start the Meteor app, else the container will fail to start.
This sample docker-compose.yml file starts up a container that has used meteorhacks/meterod as its base and a mongo container. It also passes along several variables to Meteor needed to start up, specifies the port number the container will listen on, and waits 30 seconds for the mongodb container to start up before starting up the Meteor container.
Sometimes, you need to rebuild binary npm modules. If so, expose REBUILD_NPM_MODULES
environment variable. It will take couple of seconds to complete the rebuilding process.
docker run -d \
-e ROOT_URL=http://yourapp.com \
-e MONGO_URL=mongodb://url \
-e MONGO_OPLOG_URL=mongodb://oplog_url \
-e BUNDLE_URL=http://mybundle_url_at_s3.tar.gz \
-e REBUILD_NPM_MODULES=1 \
-p 8080:80 \
meteorhacks/meteord:binbuild
There are some issues when running spiderable inside a Docker container. For that, check this issue: meteor/meteor#2429
Fortunately, there is a fix. Simply use ongoworks:spiderable
instead the official package.
There's currently (2015-07-18) an issue relating to how the command or entry point is parsed, so containers won't boot using the 'docker run' commands as above.
Instead, Joyent support has suggested the following workaround until their fix can be rolled out.
docker run -d \
-e ROOT_URL=http://yourapp.com \
-e MONGO_URL=mongodb://url \
-e MONGO_OPLOG_URL=mongodb://oplog_url \
-p 80:80 \
--entrypoint=bash \
yourname/app \
/opt/meteord/run_app.sh