Databases and other third-party software

To set up a database or any other pieces of third-party software, you just need to add them to the same docker-compose.yml you’re using for Ergomake environments.

These pieces of third-party software are usually available on Docker Hub images already. Therefore, you can just tell Docker Compose to pull them and fill the necessary environment variables.

In the example below, you can see we added a MongoDB instance to our application environment.

version: "3.8"
services:
    api:
        build: ./backend
        ports:
            - "3001:3001"

    database:
        image: mongo
        ports:
            - "27017"
        environment:
            MONGODB_INITDB_ROOT_USERNAME: username
            MONGODB_INITDB_ROOT_PASSWORD: password

With that, we can now connect our API to the MongoDB instance by updating the API’s service and adding environment variables pointing to this MongoDB instance.

version: "3.8"
services:
    api:
        build: ./backend
        ports:
            - "3001:3001"
        environment:
            DB_HOSTNAME: mongo
            DB_PORT: 27017
            DB_USERNAME: username
            DB_PASSWORD: changeme
            DB_NAME: my-database

    database:
        image: mongo
        ports:
            - "27017"
        environment:
            MONGODB_INITDB_ROOT_USERNAME: username
            MONGODB_INITDB_ROOT_PASSWORD: changeme
            MONGO_INITDB_DATABASE: my-database

Now, as long as the API itself uses those environment variables to connect to the database, everything should work. Below, you can see an example of how you’d use these environment variables to connect to the database.

import { MongoClient } from "mongodb";

const { DB_HOSTNAME, DB_USERNAME, DB_PASSWORD, DB_PORT, DB_NAME } = process.env;

const url = `mongodb://${DB_USERNAME}:${DB_PASSWORD}@{DB_HOSTNAME}:${DB_PORT}`;
const client = new MongoClient(url);

async function main() {
    await client.connect();
    const db = client.db(DB_NAME);
    return "Connected to MongoDB.";
}

main()
    .then(console.log)
    .catch(console.error)
    .finally(() => client.close());

Once you have a docker-compose.yml file, you can run docker-compose up to ensure your application works on your machine. If it does, you’re ready to commit your docker-compose.yml file and start using preview environments. Remember: whatever you can run locally with Docker Compose, you can also run on the cloud.

Now, whenever you open a pull-request, Ergomake will spin-up a cloud environment that’s just like your local one. Then, the Ergomake Bot will add a comment to your pull-request containing a link to that environment.

From there on, you can already cURL your API using the URL sent by the Ergomake Bot or connect a local front-end app to it, for example.

​

Public and private services

To expose an application to the internet in your preview environment, you must bind the container’s target port to a localhost port, just as you’d do with a local docker-compose.yml.

Once you do that, Ergomake will always expose the first bound port in your service’s ports attribute.

In the example above, our back-end’s port 3001 is publicly accessible because it’s the first bound port for the backend service. On the other hand, that MongoDB instance isn’t exposed to the internet.

To expose your MongoDB instance to the world, bind the container’s 27017 port to a localhost port, as shown below.

version: "3.8"
services:
    api:
        build: ./backend
        ports:
            - "3001:3001"

    database:
        image: mongo
        # Ergomake will now expose the MongoDB instance to the internet
        ports:
            - "27017:27017"
        environment:
            MONGODB_INITDB_ROOT_USERNAME: username
            MONGODB_INITDB_ROOT_PASSWORD: password