Baseimage for Node.js applications

Used in my node js projects. The node_modules is not in the development directory but in the docker container.

Building

$ docker build -t uwegerdes/nodejs .

Building with arguments

The build is based on my (docker-baseimage)[https://github.com/UweGerdes/docker-baseimage]

$ export NODE_VERSION=22.x
$ docker build -t uwegerdes/nodejs \
	-t uwegerdes/nodejs:${NODE_VERSION} \
	--build-arg NODE_VERSION="${NODE_VERSION}" \
	--build-arg NPM_LOGLEVEL="warn" \
	--no-cache \
	.

NODE_VERSION is found on (github.com/nodesource)[https://github.com/nodesource/distributions/blob/master/README.md#installation-instructions]. The above command builds image tags latest and 22.x.

On loglevel warn you have less output on npm install operations. Don't think nothing happens if the build of a image seems busy - you know npm install usually has a lot of things to do. You may want to use info for much more output.

You may add --build-arg BASEIMAGE_VERSION="latest" depending on the uwegerdes/baseimage tags you have prepared.

If you are working on a linux system and are not on user id 1000 you should add --build-arg UID=$(id -u) --build-arg GID=$(id -g).

Usage

Use this baseimage in other Dockerfiles:

FROM uwegerdes/nodejs

Or start a container (in your node project directory) with:

$ docker run -it \
	--name nodejs \
	-v $(pwd):/home/node/app \
	uwegerdes/nodejs \
	bash

Restart it with:

$ docker start -ai nodejs

Inside the container you can use npm init in the app directory.

If you want to install node modules in the container please use the following commands:

$ npmis module     # for npm install --save
$ npmisd module    # for npm install --save-dev

This installs the packages in the container directory /home/node/node_modules/ and not in home/node/app/ - your project directory will not have node_modules which makes backups and other things simpler.

Check for updates

The package npm-check-updates is installed globally, so you can check your package.json for updates with:

$ cp package.json ../
$ cd ..
$ ncu
$ ncu -u
$ cp package.json ./app/

Settings

The user node with password node and home directory /home/node is created with user id 1000.

The following variables are set:

• USER_NAME=node
• HOME=/home/node
• NODE_HOME=/home/node
• NODE_PATH=/home/node/node_modules:/usr/lib/node_modules
• NODE_ENV=development
• APP_HOME=/home/node/app

Optional parameter from build command:

• NPM_LOGLEVEL