Episode 12. Naming and Tagging Docker Images and Containers
In this article, we will learn how to add names to docker containers and images
In previous episodes, we have used randomly assigned names or container IDs for docker commands.
1. Naming a Docker Container:
→ By default, when we create a container, a random name is assigned to it.
→ It would be great if we could assign names ourselves, we then don’t have to get ID or name from the list, we would remember it.
docker ps -a // check all containers in docker
docker run <docker-image-id> // create a container
→ We observe some random names is assigned by docker (eg. optimistic wozniak)
→ We add a name flag for adding custom name
docker run --name <my-container-name> <docker-image-id> eg. docker run --name node-feb-2022 f45df32be90022c8c
→ Let us run the view docker container command again
docker ps -a // Check all containers in docker
→ The beauty of naming convention is we do not need to check the ID or random name now. We can directly start/stop the container with our assigned name.
2. Naming a Docker Image:
For naming a docker image, we have two attributes for this
→ To check docker images, we run the below command:
docker images // gives us list of images
docker build . // create docker images
→ Image has two sections — repository (i.e. name) and tag (i.e. version)
→ We observe, only the one downloaded from Docker Hub has names, the rest do not have.
→ To assign names in image we use -t flag
docker build -t <image-name>:<image-tag> .eg. docker build -t node:17 .
→ This time we see our image name and tag assigned 😀
Video:
Closing Thoughts:
It is difficult to remember the ID of multiple containers. If we assign a name to our docker image or container, we will remember it for a long time.
Official images in Docker Hub have names assigned by default eg. node, node: latest, node:14. It is a good practice to assign names as shown in the last image.
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