Docker Networking Cookbook

Exposing and publishing ports

As we've seen in the previous examples, exposing services living in containers to the outside world is a critical component of Docker. Up until this point, we've let the images and the Docker engine do the heavy lifting for us in terms of the actual port mapping. To do this, Docker uses a combination of metadata from container images as well as a built-in system for tracking port allocations. In this recipe, we'll walk through the process for defining ports to be exposed as well as options for publishing ports.

Getting ready

You'll need access to a Docker host and an understanding of how your Docker host is connected to the network. In this recipe, we'll be using the docker1 host that we used in previous recipes. You'll ...