What is this ?

A very lightweight docker utility written for linux which neatly wraps up the most useful docker commands

Why does someone need it ?

• Well for the beginners to docker, managing the images and the containers can all seem bit too much, Which is what I certainly felt in my beginnings. This library simplifies your workflow. You neither have to set image name nor container name each time you want to do something. Just go to the root folder of your project and just execute the commands you want, no command line arguments!
  
  

• And by default, docker leaves all the unused images and containers created in the stale state, just lying there. Although, technically they don't take too much space due to caching, I don't like stale images and containers just lying around, corrupting my docker queries for images and containers
  
  

• And, most importantly, for the ease of use. It does not matter, how many configuration options a service has and how customizable it is, unless it is intiutive for user(Both beginners and the experienced) to use it. dockerh just imporves overall user experience in that regard. Previously, I used to achieve the same by creating bunch of command line aliases for docker commands, which then slowly evolved into this dockerh

How do I use this ?

• You need to have docker already installed on your system, as this library makes calls to docker internally.
• Features
  • Commit your changes. This internally creates a docker image
    dockerh commit
    
    
  • Update your program. This internally builds a new container and stops any existing container
    dockerh update
    
    
  • Start your program. This interanlly calls docker start.
    dockerh start
    
    
  • Stop your program. This interanlly calls docker stop
dockerh stop
    
    
  • Check the status of your program. This internally calls docker ps with containter name as filter
    dockerh status
    
    
  • See the live logs of your program. This internally calls docker attach
dockerh log
    
    
  • Clear all the stale images of your program. This internally calls docker image prune
dockerh clear
    
    
  • Enter into your running container using another terminal, and see what's happening in it. For all purposes and intents, docker container is like another linux machine. So you can go ahead and dols -la or ps -ef, treat it like a separate machine.I always find this option quite useful. By the way did I tell you that you can do this from as many terminals as you want, all of them unique little windows to your container.This internally uses docker exec to attach bash session to your container
    dockerh join
    
    
• Advanced Features

  • Docker needs unique names to identify both the containers and images. It certainly is cumbersome to provide the names each time. So dockerh creates a random name for your docker containers and images, and manages it completely itself, so that you don't have to provide it each time or even remember it for that matter. As you can clearly see in the above listed dockerh commands, none of them take name as input

  • But if for some reason, you feel the need to want to provide the name for yourself. You can either provide it in a DockerH file or set the environment variable DOCKERH_MODULE_NAME to the name you want. Remember as per the docker naming conventions, the name needs to be lowercase
    
    

    DockerH file name is just that; "DockerH", no extensions

    1. DockerH my-foo-program

    2. Setting the environment bariable export DOCKERH_MODULE_NAME=my-foo-program

  • Also if you want to provide any environment vaiables to your docker program, just add them in a docker-env file. You don't have to provide the name anywhere, if it is present dockerh automatically picks it up.
    
    

    docker-env file name is just that; "docker-env", no extensions

    Example: docker-env file

      MY_VAR1=true
      MY_DB_USERNAME=foo
      MY_DB_PASSWORD=bar