Node-TypeScript-Docker Template

🐳 Template for a simple TypeScript-Node-Docker service with hot reloading.

Intentionally minimalistic, without any framework or additional libraries.

Usage

1. Use/Pull/Fork this template
2. Navigate to the folder
3. Run docker-compose up

Depending on your machine, you might experience a "ts-node" error after a fresh build. Doing step #3 once again solves the issue.

Hot Reloading Explained

Removing volumes section from the docker-compose.yml file malfunctions hot reloading.

Files

Automatic (hot) reloading is triggered when a .ts file is changed locally. The exact flow is visualized below.

Packages

Adding packages to the running container does not trigger hot reloading. When adding a new package by using yarn add, do the following steps instead:

1. Stop and remove the existing container docker-compose stop ts-service && docker-compose rm -f ts-service

In case you changed the service name in the docker-compose.yml file, replace "ts-service" with the changed name

2. Run docker-compose build ts-service. This will install the newly added package too
3. Run docker-compose up ts-service

Or in one line:

docker-compose stop ts-service && docker-compose rm -f ts-service && docker-compose build ts-service && docker-compose up ts-service

Production Deploy

container's content

The built container in production will only contain files/folders not ignored by the .dockerignore file (wanted behaviour).

docker-compose.yml

The docker-compose.yml file and docker-compose commands should not be used in production. This file's purpose is to ease the local development, including adding the hot reloading ability.

command

When deploying the service to production, set yarn start as the container's "command".

Examples:

• In AWS ECS: Container Definitions -> command
• In GCP Cloud Run: Container command

Alternative:

1. Remove command: yarn dev line from docker-compose.yml and set NODE_ENV environment variable (line #9)

        ...
        environment:
            NODE_ENV: "development"

2. Add this line to the very end of the Dockerfile (line #6)

CMD yarn "$(if [ $NODE_ENV = 'production' ] ; then echo 'start' ; else echo 'dev'; fi)"

3. When deploying to production, set NODE_ENV environment variable to production

When choosing the alternative, it is no longer needed to set "command" in your cloud provider. Setting CMD in the Dockerfile (step #2) does the job for you

Errors

When you encounter an error (or unexpected behaviour) that you cannot solve:

1. Remove the Docker container, image, and valumes

2. Then run docker-compose build --no-cache ts-service

3. Lastly, run docker-compose up ts-service

In case this does not fix the error, or if you have any additional questions, feel free to open a GitHub issue