The Complete Guide to Docker Commands and How to Use Them

Introduction: Docker Commands For Beginners

Docker is a software package that was designed primarily to run web applications. It has a lot of other uses, but its main function is to allow developers to package up their application with all of the parts it needs, such as libraries and other dependencies, and then ship it all out as one thing. Docker allows developers to isolate their application from the environment in which it’s running so that the app only sees what it needs to see.

This makes Docker a prime choice for development teams who want an easy way of building and testing software. The more complex your app becomes, the more likely you are going need some sort of virtualization solution like Docker.

What is the Difference Between the ‘docker run’ & ‘docker compose’ Commands?

Docker commands are essential to building, distributing, and running images. The “docker run” command is the most significant one for developers as it is used to create a container from an image.

The docker compose command is for orchestrating containers into services. It provides the ability to do things like start, stop, or pause services.

To separate concerns between development and operations teams, developers should use ‘docker run’ instead of ‘docker compose’.

How To Run a Container Using the ‘docker run’ Command?

This tutorial will teach you how to run a container using the ‘docker run’ command.

The docker run command is a simple way to start a container for testing purposes. The syntax of this command is docker run [OPTIONS] IMAGE[:TAG|@DOCKERFILE].

This command will allow you to start a container from an image and also pass in any options that it needs to start the container.

How To Create & Share Your Own Docker Image?

This guide will show you how to create your own docker image and share it with others.

To start, you’ll need to have Docker installed on your local machine. The following instructions are for MacOS.

We want to start by running a container in development mode with the name my-name-image, so we will use the command: $ docker run -it -v ${PWD}:/project -w /project my-name-image bash

Now we want to add a sample text file:

$ echo “hello world” > index.txt

And finally we want to stop the container and save it as an image: $ exit $ docker commit $(docker ps -lq) my-name-image

Conclusion: Why it’s Important to Get Familiar with Docker Commands

As more companies are discovering the benefits of containers, it is important for engineers to get familiar with Docker commands. If you are not sure where to start, this article will help you get started with Docker by giving you a full overview of Docker commands, their use cases and what they can be used for.