Strapi containerized

⚠️ This image is only for Strapi v3. For now, we will not update it for v4.

However, to build an image compatible with Strapi v4, we recommend you check out this tool created by the Strapi Community: https://github.com/strapi-community/strapi-tool-dockerize

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Images

Strapi comes with two images: strapi/strapi and strapi/base.

Use strapi/strapi to create a new project or run a project on your host machine.

Use strapi/base to build a Dockerfile and create an image for your app.

How to use strapi/strapi

This image allows you to create a new strapi project or run a project from your host machine. The default command that will run in your project is strapi develop.

Creating a new project

When running this image, strapi will check if there is a project in the /srv/app folder of the container. If there is nothing then it will run the strapi new command in the container /srv/app folder. You can create a new project by running this command.

docker run -it -p 1337:1337 -v `pwd`/project-name:/srv/app strapi/strapi

This command creates a project with an SQLite database. Then starts it on port 1337.

The -v option creates a project-name folder on your computer that will be shared with the docker container. Once the project is created it will be available in this folder on your computer.

Environment variables

When creating a new project with this image you can pass database configurations to the strapi new command.

• DATABASE_CLIENT a database provider supported by Strapi: (sqlite, postgres, mysql ,mongo).
• DATABASE_HOST database host.
• DATABASE_PORT database port.
• DATABASE_NAME database name.
• DATABASE_USERNAME database username.
• DATABASE_PASSWORD database password.
• DATABASE_SSL boolean for SSL.
• EXTRA_ARGS pass extra args to the strapi new.

Example

You can create a strapi project that will connect to a remote postgres database like so:

docker run -it \
  -e DATABASE_CLIENT=postgres \
  -e DATABASE_NAME=strapi \
  -e DATABASE_HOST=0.0.0.0 \
  -e DATABASE_PORT=5432 \
  -e DATABASE_USERNAME=strapi \
  -e DATABASE_PASSWORD=strapi \
  -p 1337:1337 \
  -v `pwd`/project-name:/srv/app \
  strapi/strapi

You can also create projects using docker-compose. See examples of using these variables with docker-compose in the examples folder.

Running a project from your host machine

You can also use strapi/strapi to run a project you already have created (or cloned for a repo) on your computer.

First make sure to delete the node_modules folder if you have already installed your dependencies on your host machine. Then run:

cd my-project
docker run -it -p 1337:1337 -v `pwd`:/srv/app strapi/strapi

This will start by installing the dependencies and then run strapi develop in the project.

Environment variables

If you are using environment variables in your code you can pass them with the -e option (e.g docker run -e ENV_VAR=sth ...).

You can for example set your database configuration with environment variables. Because the default container command is strapi develop you will need to update your development database configuration following the production example in the documentation. Then you can run:

docker run -it \
  -e DATABASE_NAME=strapi \
  -e DATABASE_HOST=0.0.0.0 \
  -e DATABASE_PORT=1234 \
  -e DATABASE_USERNAME=strapi \
  -e DATABASE_PASSWORD=strapi \
  -p 1337:1337 \
  -v `pwd`/project-name:/srv/app \
  strapi/strapi

Upgrading Strapi in Docker container

• Important! Upgrading strapi/strapi Docker image tag does not upgrade Strapi version.
  • Strapi NodeJS application builds itself during first startup only, if detects empty folder and is normally stored in mounted volume. See docker-entrypoint.sh.
• To upgrade, first follow the guides (general and version-specific) to rebuild actual Strapi NodeJS application. Secondly, update docker tag to match the version to avoid confusion.

How to use strapi/base

When deploying a strapi application to production you can use docker to package your whole app in an image. You can create a Dockerfile in your strapi project like the one in ./examples/custom

Building the images in this repository

You can build the images with the build command. To see the options run:

yarn install
./bin/build.js --help