Using Docker

Note that this is currently configured for ease of development. The primary consequences of this are:

• The DB running in a container is not well secured.
  • To correct this, make proper use of .env files not in git.
• The application files are mounted from the file system rather than contained in the app container.
  • To correct this, use COPY within the Dockerfile instead of the mountings in volumes in the docker-compose file.

Containers

montclairptac-db0

This runs a Mysql database. It provides persistence for the app container.

montclairptac-app

This is a no-op container from Docker's perspective: it starts and does nothing. It is intended for use by people via:

  docker exec -it montclairptac-app bash

From that internal shell, one can run the various commands provided by this software to deal with the student data provided by the district.

Storage

Application Files

The docker-compose file currently mounts app/{bin,db,tmp} from the local file system rather than letting these be used from within the container. This means that one can edit scripts in app/bin from outside the container (with one's usual editor) and then run them within the container (thereby using the libraries, utilities, etc. in the container plus the MySQL container's data server) for testing. This is a non-standard way to use Docker, but it speeds the development cycle.

Database

The database persists in a docker volume. It can be removed (thereby requiring that it be rebuilt) with:

docker container rm montclairptac-db0
docker volume rm 0_montclairptac-dbdata0

Note that this requires that the container be removed to free up the volume for removal.

At the moment, rebuilding the DB volume does not restore the schema. That is a separate process (and one under development as of this writing).

Starting

The quick way to build and start the containers:

docker compose --profile app --ansi never down && docker compose --profile app --ansi never up --build

Note that this runs the containers in the foreground. If one wants to run them in detached mode, add -d after up.

To run a shell within the app container, gaining access to the various utilities, run:

docker exec -it montclairptac-app bash

To run mysql within the container's shell:

mysql --user=${MYSQL_USER} --password=${MYSQL_PASSWORD} ${MYSQL_DATABASE}