Docker Node.js best practices 🐳 📦

Docker Node.js development to production best practices with security in mind.

What is this?

This is a set of good defaults and best practices when working with Node.js and Docker.

Advantages for dev

Efficient images - Only NPM packages are installed inside the container.
Zero config startup - Use abstracted commands to build and start your app.
Debugging support - Node runs with the inspect flag on the standard port (9229) and VSCode integration provided.
Easy local/Docker development - Ability to run your app both within Docker and locally without conflicts with NPM packages.
Nodemon - Automatically restart Node on file changes.
Edit locally while running Docker - Source code is bind mounted into the container.
Configurable environment variables - Edit the .env file to customise your app.

Advantages for prod

Single place to upgrade Node.js version - Node.js version declared once which is shared across all environments
Only prod dependencies - No dev dependencies included in the final prod image.
Correct NODE_ENV - NODE_ENV defaults to production both at build time and runtime.
Proper shutdown - Graceful shutdown of Node.js using stoppable.
Security - Node runs as the user node rather than root.
Multi stage builds - Single Dockerfile for dev/test and prod images.
Testability - Separate test image for testing in a CI environment.

Getting started

Clone this repo
Run make build-dev followed by make start to build and run the application
Visit http://localhost:3000 in your browser

License