9. Typescript Journey - Express API Docker

Series Posts

Source Code

Goal

Run an Express API in Docker

Setup

We will building off the this branch

You will need download and install Docker Desktop.

Create Dockerfile

You will want to create two files a Dockerfile and .dockerignore. The .dockerignore makes sure that our node_modules and transpiled js files don’t get put into the image.

touch Dockerfile
touch .dockerignore

Here is the contents of the .dockerignore

node_modules
dist

This uses our base image of node:lts-alpine, we could also use node:latest, but the node:latest is over 1gb and this alpine image is around 250mb.

FROM node:lts-alpine

Sets the working directory to /app, copies the package.json to that folder and then run npm install to install the modules

WORKDIR /app
COPY package*.json ./
RUN npm install

Copy the rest of the files to the working directory and run npx tsc to transpile them to js files

COPY . .
RUN npx tsc

This expose port 3000 in the docker file and runs npm start to start up express

EXPOSE 3000
CMD ["npm","start"]

Here is the full Dockerfile

FROM node:lts-alpine
WORKDIR /app
COPY package*.json ./
RUN npm install
COPY . .
RUN npx tsc
EXPOSE 3000
CMD ["npm","start"]

Build and Run Docker Images

Build the Docker Image, in the root image of your folder and tag it with expressapi

docker build . -t expressapi

Run the docker image. This will name it personapi and map port 3000 to 3000 on the host machine

docker run -p 3000:3000 --name personapi expressapi

Test API

You can use curl to test your endpoints. The server will be running on port 3000

Get All

curl http://localhost:3000/api/people -i

Get By Id

curl http://localhost:3000/api/people/1 -i

Create New Record

curl -X POST -H 'Content-Type: application/json' -d '{"firstName": "Bob","lastName": "Sheridan","age": 1}' http://localhost:3000/api/people -i

Update Existing Record

curl -X PUT -H 'Content-Type: application/json' -d '{"firstName": "B","lastName": "Sheridan","age": 1}' http://localhost:3000/api/people/1 -i

Delete Record

curl -X DELETE http://localhost:3000/api/people/1 -i

Cleanup

Once you have tested your api you can clean it up

Kill Running Docker Image

docker kill personapi

Remove Container

docker container rm personapi

Remove Docker Image

docker image rm expressapi