I have a Docker container which runs a Flask application. When Flask receives and http request, I would like to trigger the execution of a new ephemeral Docker container which shutdowns once it completes what it has to do.
I have read Docker-in-Docker should be avoided so this new container should be run as a sibling container on my host and not within the Flask container.
What would be the solution to do this with docker-py?
Answering my own question. Here is a complete setup which works. In one folder, create the following files:
requirements.txt
docker==3.5.0
flask==1.0.2
Dockerfile
FROM python:3.7-alpine3.7
# Project files
ARG PROJECT_DIR=/srv/api
RUN mkdir -p $PROJECT_DIR
WORKDIR $PROJECT_DIR
COPY requirements.txt ./
# Install Python dependencies
RUN pip install --upgrade pip
RUN pip install -r requirements.txt
docker-compose.yml
Make sure to mount docker.sock in volumes as mentioned in the previous answer above.
version: '3'
services:
api:
container_name: test
restart: always
image: test
build:
context: ./
volumes:
- ./:/srv/api/
- /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock
environment:
FLASK_APP: api.py
command: ["flask", "run", "--host=0.0.0.0"]
ports:
- 5000:5000
api.py
from flask import Flask
import docker
app = Flask(__name__)
@app.route("/")
def hello():
client = docker.from_env()
client.containers.run('alpine', 'echo hello world', detach=True, remove=True)
return "Hello World!"
Then open your browser and navigate to http://0.0.0.0:5000/
It will trigger the execution of the alpine container. If you don't already have the alpine image, it will take a bit of time the first time because Docker will automatically download the image.
The arguments detach=True allows to execute the container asynchronously so that Flask does not wait for the end of the process before returning its response.
The argument remove=True indicates Docker to remove the container once its execution is completed.