Connecting to mongo docker container from host

Question

I'm running Docker on OS X with:

docker run --name mongo -p 27017:27017 -v ./data/db:/data/db -d mongo mongod 

and using the ip I get from:

docker inspect --format '{{ .NetworkSettings.IPAddress }}' <cid> 

in:

var MongoClient = require('mongodb').MongoClient; var assert = require('assert'); var url = 'mongodb://<ip>:27017';  MongoClient.connect(url, function(err, db) {    assert.equal(null, err);    db.close(); }); 

and I'm getting a timed out error.

I'm using the official mongo repository from Docker Hub. Is there any additional setup that I need to do in order to connect from the host?

Answer 1

Is the node.js code being run from a container or from the host?

If it's on the host, just use the localhost address i.e:

var url = 'mongodb://localhost:27017'; 

This will work because you published the port with -p 27017:27017.

If the code is running inside a container, it would be best to rewrite it to use links and referring to the mongo container by name e.g:

var url = 'mongodb://mongo:27017'; 

Then when you launch the container with the Node.js code, you can just do something like:

docker run -d --link mongo:mongo my_container 

Docker will then add an entry to /etc/hosts inside the container so that the name mongo resolves to the IP of the mongo container.

Answer 2

If you use a user defined network you should be able to pick it up without linking or specifying 27017

const MONGO_NAME_STR = "mongodb://" + "your_docker_container_name"; var db = {};  mongo_client.connect(MONGO_NAME_STR, function(err, _db){   //some err handling   db = _db; });