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Docker

ReNative has the ability to deploy your website made with rnv to Docker hub or export it to a Docker container.

The files are exported to platformBuilds/xxxxx_web/export/docker.

The app is served by an nginx server over HTTP and HTTPS using a self signed cert that's generated when the image is built. For the moment there is no support for custom certs or Let's Encrypt but they will be added in the future.

Structure​
.
├── public - your app's resting place
│   ├── index.html
│   └── ...
├── docker-compose.build.yml - compose file used when you want to build the image (needs internet connection)
├── docker-compose.yml - compose file used when you import the tar
├── Dockerfile
├── nginx.default.conf - nginx's config used inside the container
└── {projectName}_{projectVersion}.tar - tar file used to import the image on a system without internet connection

The export contains 2 compose files. If you don't want to import the tar containing the built image you can rename the docker-compose.build.yml to docker-compose.yml and use that one with docker-compose up -d. Keep in mind that you need an internet connection in this case since it tries to pull the base image from DockerHub.

However, if you are just trying to test out the feature on the same machine that you ran rnv export or rnv deploy you can directly run docker-compose up -d without any changes because you already have the image with the correct tag in your docker instance.

Commands​

rnv export -p web -t docker - will build your project and create a docker image with an nginx server hosting it.

rnv deploy -p web -t docker - same as above but also publish it to DockerHub. It will tag the image with 2 tags, one is the app's version and one is latest. This way you will have a history of all the versions and a latest one.

Advanced usage​

Offline usage​

On systems without internet connection or no access to DockerHub you can import the .tar file and run it, since the tar contains all the layers needed for the image.

  1. docker load --input xx.tar
  2. docker-compose up -d

Always use the docker-compose file exported with .tar file, don't try to use an older version because it will not work. Every docker-compose file has the app's version hardcoded as the image tag.

Healthcheck probe​

You can also instruct rnv to add an empty healthcheck file into the container (testprobe.html) that you can ping with your load balancer.

You can do that by adding the following flag into your appConfigs/xxx/renative.json file:

{
    platforms: {
        web: {
            deploy: {
                "docker": {
                    "healthcheckProbe": true
                }
            }
        }
    }
}

Zip the export​

You can also instruct rnv to make a zip from the output files (xx.tar and docker-compose.yml) in order to make distribution easier.

You can do that by adding the following flag into your appConfigs/xxx/renative.json file:

{
    platforms: {
        web: {
            deploy: {
                "docker": {
                    "zipImage": true
                }
            }
        }
    }
}

Making changes​

If you feel brave and want to modify any file, for example the nginx config, make sure you build your image again since everything is copied over at build step.