CHEATSHEET: Docker Compose - Basic Syntax and Concepts

Configuarion

• version - specify which version of docker compose file format to be used
• services - lists the different services to be started for the app. Each service definition contains configuration that is applied to each container started for that service
  • image - specifies the image to start the container from
  • build - configuration options that are applied at build time
  • ports - expose ports from the container to the host machine
  • restart - sets the restart policy. Possible values are:
    • "no" - no restarts of container. This is the default. The double-quotes are required
    • always - restarts if container stops for ANY reason
    • on-failure - restarts if container stopped with an error code
    • unless-stopped - restarts unless the container was manually stopped

CLI Commands

• docker-compose up - builds, (re)creates, starts, and attaches to containers for a service. Accepted flags are:
  • --build - build images before starting containers
  • -d, --detach - run containers in the background
• docker-compose down - stops containers and removes containers, networks, volumes, and images created by up
• docker-compose ps - lists the running containers initialized by docker-compose with the current docker-compose.yml file