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Container 2 Container Networking

  • One rule: If two containers are on the same network then they can talk to each other. If they aren’t, they can’t.

  • Docker allows us to create networks to allow separate containers to talk to each other via service discovery. No need to use IP addresses, a container name is all you need!

  • The Docker CLI does allow us to create networks and set up containers within them but its somewhat manual and there is a much better tool included with Docker to do the job.

Docker Compose

Don't worry its installed by default

Let's take a look at the docker-compose.yml file under the app directory

docker-compose up --build -d
  • --builds the image for us
    • We don't always want to build the image, if we haven't made any code changes then we can skip building
  • -d detached mode again so we can still use the terminal

To stop your containers

docker-compose down

Logs

docker-compose logs