In the words of Docker Inc.

A Practical Introduction to Compose is a tool for defining and running multi-container Docker applications. With
Compose, you use a YAML file to configure your application’s services. Then, with a single

Docker Compose command, you create and start all the services from your configuration.

Content source: https://hackernoon.com/practical-introduction-to-docker-compose-

d34e79c4c2b6 The Voting App
Source Code : https://github.com/dockersamples/example-voting-app
Introducing the most favourite demonstration app for the Docker community “The Voting
App”, as if it needs an introduction at all. This is a simple application based on micro-services
architecture, consisting of 5 simple services.

Docker containers opened a world of possibilities for the tech community, hassles in setting
up new software were decreased unlike old times when a mess was to be sorted by a grievous
format, it reduced the time to set up and use new software which eventually played a big part
for techies to learn new things, roll it out in a container and scrap it when done. Things
became easy, and the best thing its open source anyone and everyone can use it, comes with
a little learning curve though.

Out of the myriad possibilities was the possibility of implementing complex technology stacks
for our applications, which previously would have been the domain of experts. Today with
the help of containers software engineers with sound understanding of the underlying
systems can implement a complex stack and why not it’s the need of the hour, the figure of
speech “Jack of all trades” got a fancy upgrade; “Master of some” based on the needs of the
age. Simply put “T” shaped skills.
Voting app architecture [https://github.com/docker/example-voting-app]
The possibility of defining a complex stack in a file and running it with a single command,
pretty tempting huh. The guys at Docker Inc. choose to call it Docker compose. 1. Voting-App: Frontend of the application written in Python, used by users to cast
their votes.
2. Redis: In-memory database, used as intermediate storage.
In this article, we will use Docker’s example Voting App and deploy it using Docker compose. 3. Worker: .Net service, used to fetch votes from Redis and store in Postres database.
4. DB: PostgreSQL database, used as database.
5. Result-App: Frontend of the application written in Node.js, displays the voting
Docker Compose results.

Cloud Computing – Docker Compose Tutorial 1 Cloud Computing – Docker Compose Tutorial 2
 The Voting repo has a file called docker-compose.yml this file contains the configuration for
creating the containers, exposing ports, binding volumes and connecting containers through Likewise the Voting results app can be accessed on http://localhost:5001
networks required for the voting app to work. Sounds like a lot of pretty long docker
run and docker network create commands otherwise, docker compose allows us to put
all of that stuff in a single docker-compose file in yaml format.

Compose Time
With all of our application defined in a single compose file we can take a sigh of relief, chill
and simply run the application. The beauty of compose lies in the fact that a single command
creates all the services, wires up the networks(literally), mounts all volumes and exposes the
ports. Its time to welcome the up command, its performs all of the aforementioned tasks.
$ docker-compose up

After lots of “Pull complete”, hundreds of megabytes and few minutes (maybe more). . .

Voila, we have the voting app up and running.

Command docker ps lists all the running containers Each vote cast on the Voting app is first stored in the Redis in-memory database, the .Net
worker service fetches the vote and stores it in the Postgres DB which is accessed by the
$ docker ps -a --format="table {{.Names}}\t{{.Image}}\t{{.Ports}}"
NAMES IMAGE PORTS Node.js frontend.
voting_worker_1 voting_worker
db postgres:9.4 5432/tcp
voting_vote_1
voting_result_1
voting_vote
voting_result
0.0.0.0:5000->80/tcp
0.0.0.0:5858->5858/tcp, Compose Features
0.0.0.0:5001->80/tcp
redis redis:alpine 0.0.0.0:32768->6379/tcp Compose provide the flexibility to use a project name to isolate the environments from each
other, the project name is the base name of the directory that contains the project. In our
The above command displays all the running containers, respective images and the exposed
voting app this is signified by the name of the containers voting_worker_1 where voting is
port numbers.
the base name of the directory. We can set a custom project name using the -p flag followed
The Voting app can be accessed on http://localhost:5000
by the custom name.

Compose preserves all volumes used by the services defined in the compose file, thus no data
is lost when the containers are recreated using docker-compose up. Another cool feature is
that only the containers which have changed are recreated, the containers whose state did
not change remain untouched.

Another cool feature is the support for variables in the compose file, we can define variables
in a .env file and use them in the docker-compose file. Here the POSTGRES_VERSION=9.4 can
defined in the environment file or can be defined in the shell. It is used in the compose file in
the following manner:
db:
image: "postgres:${POSTGRES_VERSION}"

Cloud Computing – Docker Compose Tutorial 3 Cloud Computing – Docker Compose Tutorial 4
 Command Cheat Sheet
Its easy as breeze to start, stop and play around with compose.
$ docker-compose up -d
$ docker-compose down
$ docker-compose start
$ docker-compose stop
$ docker-compose build
$ docker-compose logs -f db
$ docker-compose scale db=4
$ docker-compose events
$ docker-compose exec db bash

Summary
Docker Compose is a great tool to quickly deploy and scrap containers, the compose file can
run seamlessly on any machine installed with docker-compose. Experimentation and learning
technologies is just a Compose file away ;).

I hope this article helped in the understanding of Docker Compose. I’d love to hear about how
you use Docker Compose in your projects. Clap if it increased your knowledge, help it reach
more people.

Cloud Computing – Docker Compose Tutorial 5