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Build and Run a Node.js application in Docker
As a bonus, get the docker-compose method at the end of the article
As a developer, after some time and experience, the next obvious step is being able to deploy our own application.
If you know your way around Linux, you might think about using background systems like service or systemctl but they require some configuration and let’s be honest, they are not very flexible to manage.
That’s when Docker comes in! It’s able to run on any major operating system (no chrome OS, sorry) and is able to normalize the environment by running into an isolated container.
If you are too impatient to reach the end or if you missed a step, you’ll find the final result on my Github!
A small Node.js API
For this tutorial, we are not going to spend much time working on our API as our goal is to deploy it.
In a new folder, run npm init -y and install Express with npm install -S express
Create an index.js file and paste the following content into it:
const express = require('express');
const app = express();
app.get('/ping', (req, res) => {
res.send('pong');
});
app.listen(3000, () => {
console.log('listening on port…
