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Port Forward Postgres Docker Container to Localhost

February 5, 2021 RSS Feed Only Files Quick View

Tools - Install the following

  • Docker - A platform to run isolated software packages called containers.
  • Docker Postgres Image - The instructions for building a postgres container. A container is an instance of a docker image.

Intro

I recently pruned my docker containers and images to free up some space on my local drive. In doing so, I was required to spin up some of the containers that I rely on for local development.

One of these containers is a instance of postgres docker image. I prefer using a docker container of this image in replace of local postgres installations, as it is much less of a headache.

I also like to treat the postgres database in the container as if it were installed locally by forwarding the container port to localhost.

I find this helps limit configuration issues when working on new projects. Now all I will have worry about is my database username and password.

Command

terminal

docker run --name localhost-postgres -p 5432:5432 -e POSTGRES_USER=some_user -e POSTGRES_PASSWORD=some_password -d postgres

This entire command is not specific to postgres. You run commands like this using most one off docker images. Lets break this command down.

  • docker run Run a command in a new container
  • --name the custom name of the container ( I prefer to prefix it with localhost in case I have other postgres docker containers, NOT binded to localhost)
  • -d Run container in background and print container ID
  • -e Set environment variables
  • POSTGRES_USER= fill this value with username for your projects database configuration/secret files. (do not include the ENV variable in the command if you prefer to use default postgres as your username)
  • POSTGRES_PASSWORD= fill this value with the password for your projects database configuration/secret files. (this ENV variable is required for the container)
  • -p Publish a container’s port(s) to the host
  • 5432:5432 The default container postgres port mapped (fowarded) to the default localhost postgres port 5432
  • postgres The installed postgres docker image you are using for the container

Using

Now all you have to do is is use the value for POSTGRES_USER= as your database username and POSTGRES_PASSWORD= as your database password.

rails_project/.env

DB_USER=some_user
DB_PASSWORD=some_password

And that is typically all I need to get up an running on a new project and run a command such as rake db:setup This is how a typical database configuration file looks in rails:

rails_project/config/database.yml

production:
  url:  <%= ENV["DATABASE_URL"] %>
  pool: <%= ENV["DB_POOL"] || ENV['RAILS_MAX_THREADS'] || 5 %>

development:
  pool: <%= ENV.fetch("RAILS_MAX_THREADS") { 5 } %>
  adapter: postgresql
  encoding: unicode
  database: rails_project
  host: localhost
  username: <%= ENV['DB_USER'] %>
  password: <%= ENV['DB_PASSWORD'] %>

test:
  pool: <%= ENV.fetch("RAILS_MAX_THREADS") { 5 } %>
  adapter: postgresql
  encoding: unicode
  database: rails_project_test
  host: localhost
  username: <%= ENV['DB_USER'] %>
  password: <%= ENV['DB_PASSWORD'] %>