Dockerizing a NestJS app with Prisma and PostgreSQL

[utterances-bot]

Dockerizing a NestJS app with Prisma and PostgreSQL

How to dockerize a NestJS application with Prisma and PostgreSQL.

https://notiz.dev/blog/dockerizing-nestjs-with-prisma-and-postgresql

[joshuacrowley]

Thanks for the detailed article, was really helpful and got me unstuck!

[MatthieuVeillon]

Hi Marc - some great content here, thanks for the detailed article.

I was wondering about the switch from postgres to localhost as the database url host. Several questions linked to that :

• To my understanding, this is the name of the service you have provided in your docker compose for the database. I might be missing something here, as a colleague of mine and I had the same config, but he couldn't access the database through the service name and had to change it to localhost

• Can you not run the migration on the dockerized database with postgres as the host in the database url ?

[marcjulian]

@MatthieuVeillon thank your!

Let me try to clarify the differences of localhost and container_name (postgress).

• localhost

When you start a docker container on your development machine it will be accessible via localhost:PORT. For a PostgreSQL DB it would be localhost:5432. That means if you like to connect to the database locally via Nest App (npm run start:dev), Prisma Studio or perform Migration from your computer than you use localhost:PORT.

• container_name | container_service

When you start know a DB and Nest Docker container you want Nest and Docker to communicate together. If you use localhost:PORT in the connection URL and the nest app is trying to connect, it won't find the db. Because localhost would be the nest container itself. Hence you need to reference the container by name or service. In the example the service and the container name are the same, so in that case for your Nest container you would need to replace localhost:PORT with container_name:PORT (-> from the blog post postgres:PORT).

Does that answer your question?

[MatthieuVeillon]

That does make perfect sense yes. Communicating between containers themselves vs from the local env.

I realized since then that I had modified my host file to map the postgres host to my localhost. 🤦‍♂️

Thanks for your clarification !

[tannaurus]

Forgive me, I'm still fairly new to Docker. Why are we:

COPY prisma ./prisma/
then also
COPY . .

Isn't that redundant?

[marcjulian]

Only package*.json and prisma directory is copied in this step to take advantage of the cached Docker layers.

Each command (COPY, RUN) in your Dockerfile creates a new layer, Docker tries to use existing cached layers. If you directly copy all source files (COPY . .) it will still work, however everytime you make a change in any source file docker invalides the cached layer and has to execute RUN npm i again. Those losing performance during development as npm i may take sometime depending on the amount of dependencies.

When you first copy package*.json and prisma directory and install the dependencies, and then only change your source code - e.g. adding new API endpoint - Docker can reuse the existing chached layers and your Docker Image is create faster.

Read more about cached layers in Building Efficient Dockerfiles - Node.js.

[tannaurus]

Brilliant @marcjulian. Thanks for that reply and your great article 👍

[victororlyk]

I have very strange bug ,
when trying to make a call to db in docker, it throws next error, while in local dev there is no such error

nest-api | [Nest] 29 - 06/12/2021, 8:43:24 AM [ExceptionsHandler] The table `borda.User` does not exist in the current database. +110958ms

nest-api | Error: The table `borda.User` does not exist in the current database.

[tannaurus]

@victororlyk sounds like you need to run a migration on your docker DB

[victororlyk]

@tannaurus
you are right, I

FROM node:14.17-alpine3.13 as development

WORKDIR /app

COPY package.json package.json
COPY yarn.lock yarn.lock
COPY prisma ./prisma/

RUN yarn install

RUN npx prisma generate
# RUN npx prisma migrate dev --name base-setup  init
COPY .. .
RUN yarn run build


FROM node:14.17-alpine3.13 as production


COPY --from=development /app/node_modules ./node_modules
COPY --from=development /app/package.json ./
COPY --from=development /app/yarn.lock ./
COPY --from=development /app/dist ./dist

CMD ["yarn", "run", "start:prod"]

#docker build -t borda-backend .

that this setup will do the trick, but actually i needed to switch DB_HOST to localhost and run migrations agains it, and then my db worked fine.
Thanks for the advice

[patryk0493]

Great guide!!! What about running a migration on production when I running my app on the Google Cloud Platform?

[marcjulian]

Hey @patryk0493 I wrote how to apply migration on production with Docker. https://notiz.dev/blog/prisma-migrate-deploy-with-docker/

[antoinfive]

@patryk0493 also curious about this. my guess is that you would run:

RUN npx prisma migrate deploy

but I am curious how others go about this

[marcjulian]

Hi @antoinfive checkout my latest post on how to deploy migration using Docker https://notiz.dev/blog/prisma-migrate-deploy-with-docker/

[sgentile]

would like to see how you setup for development as well

[evandrmb]

Hi, I've followed each step as you can see

version: "3.9"
services:
  postgres:
    container_name: postgres
    image: postgres:14.2
    restart: always
    environment:
      POSTGRES_DB: postgres
      POSTGRES_USER: root
      POSTGRES_PASSWORD: root
    volumes:
      - db_data:/var/lib/postgresql/data
    ports:
      - 5432:5432
  api:
    container_name: api
    build: .
    ports:
      - 3001:3001
    env_file:
      - .env
    depends_on:
      - postgres
volumes:
  db_data:

and defined my DATABASE_URL in .env as:

postgres://root:root@postgres/postgres?schema=public

Still my api can't reach the database, any thoughts?

[marcjulian]

@evandrmb not sure if this still is an issue. It looks like the DATABASE_URL is missing the port for the database.

postgres://root:root@postgres:5432/postgres?schema=public

[t1m4lc]

[t1m4lc]

With a postgres database in production ^^

[hicmtrex]

thank you :)

[JefferyHus]

Thank you for the article, but in my case I am still having an issue with prisma generate inside my docker file, it runs but when I deploy the image I get the error that the client does not exist

[mathankumar-dotworld]

How large is the Docker image expected to be? Right now it’s close to 650 MB, even though my Node.js app with Prisma is only around 250 MB.