Containerize a Java application

Table of contents

Prerequisites

  • You have installed the latest version of Docker Desktop. Docker adds new features regularly and some parts of this guide may work only with the latest version of Docker Desktop.
  • You have a Git client. The examples in this section use a command-line based Git client, but you can use any client.

Overview

This section walks you through containerizing and running a Java application.

Get the sample applications

Clone the sample application that you'll be using to your local development machine. Run the following command in a terminal to clone the repository.

$ git clone https://github.com/spring-projects/spring-petclinic.git

The sample application is a Spring Boot application built using Maven. For more details, see readme.md in the repository.

Initialize Docker assets

Now that you have an application, you can create the necessary Docker assets to containerize your application. You can use Docker Desktop's built-in Docker Init feature to help streamline the process, or you can manually create the assets.

Inside the spring-petclinic directory, run the docker init command. docker init provides some default configuration, but you'll need to answer a few questions about your application. Refer to the following example to answer the prompts from docker init and use the same answers for your prompts.

The sample application already contains Docker assets. You'll be prompted to overwrite the existing Docker assets. To continue with this guide, select y to overwrite them.

$ docker init
Welcome to the Docker Init CLI!

This utility will walk you through creating the following files with sensible defaults for your project:
  - .dockerignore
  - Dockerfile
  - compose.yaml
  - README.Docker.md

Let's get started!

WARNING: The following Docker files already exist in this directory:
  - docker-compose.yml
? Do you want to overwrite them? Yes
? What application platform does your project use? Java
? What's the relative directory (with a leading .) for your app? ./src
? What version of Java do you want to use? 17
? What port does your server listen on? 8080

In the previous example, notice the WARNING. docker-compose.yaml already exists, so docker init overwrites that file rather than creating a new compose.yaml file. This prevents having multiple Compose files in the directory. Both names are supported, but Compose prefers the canonical compose.yaml.

If you don't have Docker Desktop installed or prefer creating the assets manually, you can create the following files in your project directory.

Create a file named Dockerfile with the following contents.

Dockerfile
# syntax=docker/dockerfile:1

# Comments are provided throughout this file to help you get started.
# If you need more help, visit the Dockerfile reference guide at
# https://docs.docker.com/go/dockerfile-reference/

# Want to help us make this template better? Share your feedback here: https://forms.gle/ybq9Krt8jtBL3iCk7

################################################################################

# Create a stage for resolving and downloading dependencies.
FROM eclipse-temurin:17-jdk-jammy as deps

WORKDIR /build

# Copy the mvnw wrapper with executable permissions.
COPY --chmod=0755 mvnw mvnw
COPY .mvn/ .mvn/

# Download dependencies as a separate step to take advantage of Docker's caching.
# Leverage a cache mount to /root/.m2 so that subsequent builds don't have to
# re-download packages.
RUN --mount=type=bind,source=pom.xml,target=pom.xml \
    --mount=type=cache,target=/root/.m2 ./mvnw dependency:go-offline -DskipTests

################################################################################

# Create a stage for building the application based on the stage with downloaded dependencies.
# This Dockerfile is optimized for Java applications that output an uber jar, which includes
# all the dependencies needed to run your app inside a JVM. If your app doesn't output an uber
# jar and instead relies on an application server like Apache Tomcat, you'll need to update this
# stage with the correct filename of your package and update the base image of the "final" stage
# use the relevant app server, e.g., using tomcat (https://hub.docker.com/_/tomcat/) as a base image.
FROM deps as package

WORKDIR /build

COPY ./src src/
RUN --mount=type=bind,source=pom.xml,target=pom.xml \
    --mount=type=cache,target=/root/.m2 \
    ./mvnw package -DskipTests && \
    mv target/$(./mvnw help:evaluate -Dexpression=project.artifactId -q -DforceStdout)-$(./mvnw help:evaluate -Dexpression=project.version -q -DforceStdout).jar target/app.jar

################################################################################

# Create a stage for extracting the application into separate layers.
# Take advantage of Spring Boot's layer tools and Docker's caching by extracting
# the packaged application into separate layers that can be copied into the final stage.
# See Spring's docs for reference:
# https://docs.spring.io/spring-boot/docs/current/reference/html/container-images.html
FROM package as extract

WORKDIR /build

RUN java -Djarmode=layertools -jar target/app.jar extract --destination target/extracted

################################################################################

# Create a new stage for running the application that contains the minimal
# runtime dependencies for the application. This often uses a different base
# image from the install or build stage where the necessary files are copied
# from the install stage.
#
# The example below uses eclipse-turmin's JRE image as the foundation for running the app.
# By specifying the "17-jre-jammy" tag, it will also use whatever happens to be the
# most recent version of that tag when you build your Dockerfile.
# If reproducability is important, consider using a specific digest SHA, like
# eclipse-temurin@sha256:99cede493dfd88720b610eb8077c8688d3cca50003d76d1d539b0efc8cca72b4.
FROM eclipse-temurin:17-jre-jammy AS final

# Create a non-privileged user that the app will run under.
# See https://docs.docker.com/go/dockerfile-user-best-practices/
ARG UID=10001
RUN adduser \
    --disabled-password \
    --gecos "" \
    --home "/nonexistent" \
    --shell "/sbin/nologin" \
    --no-create-home \
    --uid "${UID}" \
    appuser
USER appuser

# Copy the executable from the "package" stage.
COPY --from=extract build/target/extracted/dependencies/ ./
COPY --from=extract build/target/extracted/spring-boot-loader/ ./
COPY --from=extract build/target/extracted/snapshot-dependencies/ ./
COPY --from=extract build/target/extracted/application/ ./

EXPOSE 8080

ENTRYPOINT [ "java", "org.springframework.boot.loader.launch.JarLauncher" ]

The sample already contains a Compose file. Overwrite this file to follow along with the guide. Update thedocker-compose.yaml with the following contents.

docker-compose.yaml
# Comments are provided throughout this file to help you get started.
# If you need more help, visit the Docker Compose reference guide at
# https://docs.docker.com/go/compose-spec-reference/

# Here the instructions define your application as a service called "server".
# This service is built from the Dockerfile in the current directory.
# You can add other services your application may depend on here, such as a
# database or a cache. For examples, see the Awesome Compose repository:
# https://github.com/docker/awesome-compose
services:
  server:
    build:
      context: .
    ports:
      - 8080:8080

# The commented out section below is an example of how to define a PostgreSQL
# database that your application can use. `depends_on` tells Docker Compose to
# start the database before your application. The `db-data` volume persists the
# database data between container restarts. The `db-password` secret is used
# to set the database password. You must create `db/password.txt` and add
# a password of your choosing to it before running `docker-compose up`.
#     depends_on:
#       db:
#         condition: service_healthy
#   db:
#     image: postgres
#     restart: always
#     user: postgres
#     secrets:
#       - db-password
#     volumes:
#       - db-data:/var/lib/postgresql/data
#     environment:
#       - POSTGRES_DB=example
#       - POSTGRES_PASSWORD_FILE=/run/secrets/db-password
#     expose:
#       - 5432
#     healthcheck:
#       test: [ "CMD", "pg_isready" ]
#       interval: 10s
#       timeout: 5s
#       retries: 5
# volumes:
#   db-data:
# secrets:
#   db-password:
#     file: db/password.txt

Create a file named .dockerignore with the following contents.

.dockerignore
# Include any files or directories that you don't want to be copied to your
# container here (e.g., local build artifacts, temporary files, etc.).
#
# For more help, visit the .dockerignore file reference guide at
# https://docs.docker.com/go/build-context-dockerignore/

**/.classpath
**/.dockerignore
**/.env
**/.git
**/.gitignore
**/.project
**/.settings
**/.toolstarget
**/.vs
**/.vscode
**/.next
**/.cache
**/*.*proj.user
**/*.dbmdl
**/*.jfm
**/charts
**/docker-compose*
**/compose.y*ml
**/target
**/Dockerfile*
**/node_modules
**/npm-debug.log
**/obj
**/secrets.dev.yaml
**/values.dev.yaml
**/vendor
LICENSE
README.md

You should now have the following three files in your spring-petclinic directory.

Run the application

Inside the spring-petclinic directory, run the following command in a terminal.

$ docker compose up --build

The first time you build and run the app, Docker downloads dependencies and builds the app. It may take several minutes depending on your network connection.

Open a browser and view the application at http://localhost:8080. You should see a simple app for a pet clinic.

In the terminal, press ctrl+c to stop the application.

Run the application in the background

You can run the application detached from the terminal by adding the -d option. Inside the spring-petclinic directory, run the following command in a terminal.

$ docker compose up --build -d

Open a browser and view the application at http://localhost:8080. You should see a simple app for a pet clinic.

In the terminal, run the following command to stop the application.

$ docker compose down

For more information about Compose commands, see the Compose CLI reference.

Summary

In this section, you learned how you can containerize and run a Java application using Docker.

Related information:

Next steps

In the next section, you'll learn how you can develop your application using Docker containers.

Develop your application