Docker: Stop and delete docker container if it's running

Question

I am looking to pragmatically stop and delete a docker container if it is running. This is for a build script.

Take the following example. How would I stop and delete the docker container "rabbitmq" as seen under the NAMES column in a bash script?

docker ps  CONTAINER ID        IMAGE             COMMAND                  CREATED             STATUS              PORTS                   NAMES 9909a5e2856f        rabbitmq-image   "/docker-entrypoint.s"   11 minutes ago      Up 11 minutes       0.0.0.0:5672->5672/tcp, rabbitmq 8990dd1fe503        redis-image      "/entrypoint.sh redis"   6 weeks ago         Up 4 days           0.0.0.0:32770->6379/tcp redis etc  

The following command will delete the container and does what I'm looking to do

docker stop rabbitmq && docker rm -f rabbitmq 

However, it's combing it into a script that I would like to know? I think it would look something like this.

#!/bin/bash  if [ /*docker ps check some value */ ]; then    docker stop rabbitmq && docker rm -f rabbitmq fi 

Answer 1

As you have probably noticed, docker stop as well as docker rm exit with a status code indicating failure if the container is not existent or not running. This results in your build failing.

If you can cope with the error messages in your build log you can do this little trick to prevent the shell command of failing:

docker stop rabbitmq || true && docker rm rabbitmq || true 

In the case that one of the docker command fails, true is called which always exits with a status code indicating success.

Answer 2

I have a similar problem, but didn't like the accepted answer as it suppresses all errors from the commands, rather than just the "not found" error.

However, docker ps -q --filter "name=rabbitmq" only produces output if a container of that name actually exists, so inspired by Test if a command outputs an empty string I came up with:

docker ps -q --filter "name=rabbitmq" | grep -q . && docker stop rabbitmq && docker rm -fv rabbitmq 

The following command is also useful for testing filter definitions:

docker ps -q --filter "name=rabbitmq" | grep -q . && echo Found || echo Not Found 

---

My actual use case was in defining a pair of Ansible tasks that deleted all currently existing containers (whether running or not) from a list of names generated in an earlier task:

- name: Check for containers that actually exist   shell: 'docker ps -aq --filter "name={{ item }}"'   with_items:     - '{{ previous_command.stdout_lines }}'   register: found_containers  - name: Remove the containers found by the above command   shell: 'docker stop {{ item.item }} && docker rm -fv {{ item.item }}'   with_items: '{{ found_containers.results }}'   when: item.stdout