Question

How can I expose one Docker container on the App Platform to Another?

Posted on October 4, 2022
Docker DigitalOcean App Platform
Asked by markbarrett

Hey there,

I know that when I run some Docker containers locally using Docker Compose, if I configure it correctly, a container can access another container via its hostname.

For example, if I have two containers, a Celery Worker and a RabbitMQ container (the RabbitMQ container exposes port 5672). When the RabbitMQ container starts, I can connect to the RabbitMQ queue from the Celery container using the RabbitMQ container name, something like:

rabbitmq:5672

I tried looking for this in the DigitalOcean docs but I couldn’t find anything. Do I just use the container name the same way I would if I was running them locally?

Also, with Docker Compose, I can tell Celery to depend on RabbitMQ, i.e. it won’t start until the RabbitMQ container is up and healthy. Is that also possible with AppPlatform?

Just to add, everything I’m running all apps in Docker containers on AppPlatform.

Thanks in advance!

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Jon Friesen

DigitalOcean Employee

• October 4, 2022

Accepted Answer

👋 Mark,

Components within the same app can be accessed by their component name. For example, if I had a service with the name “api” that exposed an http server, it can be accessed at http://api.

App Platform does not have the functionality to depend on other component start up times. That sounds like it could be a good feature for us to implemement though, feel free to submit it as an Idea.

Hope this helps!