How to show all running containers created by docker-compose, globally, regardless of docker-compose.yml

Question

I have several docker-compose.yml files, running ok with docker-compose up, individually.

Each docker-compose runs several containers.

After they are up, I can't see what containers are up with docker ps.
I can see something with docker-compose ps, but only for a specific docker-compose.yml.

I want access to global polling of the containers state.

How can I list all running containers, no matter their origin?

Answer 1

Docker compose adds labels to each container that it creates. If you want to get all containers created by compose, you can perform a container ls and apply a filter.

docker container ls --filter label=com.docker.compose.project

This will show all running container created by compose, regardless of the project name.

For example, I created some containers from different compose projects. With the filter, I get only those, but no other container that have not been created by compose and therefore don't have a project label.

$ base='{{.Status}}\t{{.ID}}\t{{.Names}}\t{{.Image}}\t{{.Ports}}\t{{.Networks}}\t{{.Mounts}}'
$ compose='{{.Label "com.docker.compose.project"}}\t{{.Label "com.docker.compose.service"}}'

$ docker container ls --all \
  --filter label=com.docker.compose.project \
  --format "table $compose\t$base"

project        service     STATUS                      CONTAINER ID   NAMES                IMAGE                   PORTS                                                                     NETWORKS               MOUNTS
kafka          kafka       Up 5 minutes                3f97a460266e   kafka_kafka_1        bitnami/kafka:3         0.0.0.0:9092->9092/tcp, :::9092->9092/tcp                                 kafka_default          kafka_kafka_da…,kafka_kafa_con…
kafka          zookeeper   Up 5 minutes                0b6f32ccd196   kafka_zookeeper_1    bitnami/zookeeper:3.7   2888/tcp, 3888/tcp, 0.0.0.0:2181->2181/tcp, :::2181->2181/tcp, 8080/tcp   kafka_default          kafka_zookeepe…
manager        db          Up 22 minutes               4f0e799b4fd7   manager_db_1         da2cb49d7a8d            5432/tcp                                                                  manager_default        0d667a0e48a280…
foo            db          Exited (0) 37 minutes ago   e106c5cdbf5e   foo_db_1             da2cb49d7a8d                                                                                      foo_default            5a87e93627b8f6…
foo            backend     Up 10 minutes               08a0873c0587   foo_backend_2        c316d5a335a5            80/tcp                                                                    foo_default            
foo            frontend    Up 10 minutes               be723bf41aeb   foo_frontend_1       c316d5a335a5            80/tcp                                                                    foo_default            
foo            backend     Up 10 minutes               5d91d4bcfcb3   foo_backend_1        c316d5a335a5            80/tcp                                                                    foo_default            
manager        app         Up 22 minutes               2ca4c0920807   manager_app_1        c316d5a335a5            80/tcp                                                                    manager_default        
manager        app         Up 22 minutes               b2fa2b9724b0   manager_app_2        c316d5a335a5            80/tcp                                                                    manager_default        
loadbalancer   app         Exited (0) 37 minutes ago   791f4059b4af   loadbalancer_app_1   c316d5a335a5                                                                                      loadbalancer_default   

If you want to see all container regardless of their state, you can add the --all or short -a flag to the ls command, like I did in my example. Otherwise, only running containers are shown.