How to Dockerize Angular Application

Last Updated : 26 Jul, 2024

Dockerizing an Angular application involves packaging it into a Docker container, which can simplify deployment and ensure consistency across different environments. Docker is a containerization platform that allows you to package applications and their dependencies into lightweight, portable containers. The Docker containers can run on any machine that has Docker installed, making it easier to build, deploy, and scale the Applications. In this article, we explain how to dockerize angular applications with examples below.

Key Terminologies

Docker: It is a Platform for developing, shipping, and running applications using containerization.
Docker Image: It is a read-only template that contains your applications and Its dependencies.
Docker Container: An instance of a Docker image that runs our application.
Dockerfile: A text document that contains all the commands needed to assemble a docker image.
Docker Compose A tool for defining and running multi-controller Docker applications.

Why Dockerize an Angular App?

Here we explain some key points to understand why you need to Dockerize an Angular Application.

Consistency Across Environments: Docker ensures that our application runs the same way regardless of where it is deployed, eliminating environments specific bugs.
Simplified Dependency Management: By building all dependencies within a container Docker removes the hassle of managing dependencies on the host machine.
Scalability: Docker makes it easy to scale our application by running multiple instances of our application in containers managed by orchestration tools like Kubernetes.
Isolation: Docker containers isolate our application from the host system and other applications and preventing conflicts.
Ease of Deployment: With Docker, we can easily create and deploy our application across different environments.
Version Control: Docker images can be versioned making it easy to roll back to a previous version of the application if something goes wrong.

What is a Docker Container?

A Docker container is a lightweight and standalone executable package that includes everything needed to run a piece of software, including the code runtime, system tools, libraries and settings containers are isolated from one another and from the host machine system, ensuring a consistent environment across different stages of development and deployment.

What is a Container Image?

A Container images is a lightweight, Standalone and executable software package that includes everything package that includes everything needed to run an application.

Steps to Dockerize Angular Application

To Dockerize an Angular Application, First, we need to create a sample Angular project. Below we provide step by step-by-step process from Angular project creation to Dockerize Angular Application.

Step 1: Install Docker

To dockerize angular application, First, we need Docker in our local machine. If don't have a download from the official website and install once successfully installed check the docker version by using the below command.

docker --version

Now check the version also.

Step 2: Create an Angular Application

Now create a Angular project by using below commands with your business requirements. Here we created a sample angular project.

ng new folder-name

After Angular project creation the folder structure look like below image

Once Project is created then run the angular application by using below command

ng serve

Now Customize your angular application and open this URL in your browser http://localhost:4200/

Step 3: Build the Angular Application

Once project is successfully created, Now build the Angular project by using below commands.

ng build

Step 4: Create a Dockerfile

Now create a Dockerfile in the root directory of the Angular project manually and write required Docker script in the Dockerfile.

# Stage 1: Build the Angular application
FROM node:alpine AS build

# Setup the working directory
WORKDIR /usr/src/app

# Copy package.json and package-lock.json
COPY package.json package-lock.json ./

# Install dependencies
RUN npm install

# Copy other files and folders to the working directory
COPY . .

# Build Angular application in PROD mode
RUN npm run build --prod

# Stage 2: Serve the application using Nginx
FROM nginx:alpine

# Copy built Angular app files to Nginx HTML folder
COPY --from=build /usr/src/app/dist/my-angular-app /usr/share/nginx/html

# Expose port 80
EXPOSE 80

# Start Nginx server
CMD ["nginx", "-g", "daemon off;"]

Step 5: Build the Docker Image

Once Project and Dockerfile successfully created then we need to start dockerize angular application by using Docker commands. Below we provide that information. Go to your project directory and open Command Prompt then run below Docker command

docker build -t application-name .

Once Docker image created successfully. It look like below mention image in the Docker

Step 6: Run the Docker Container

Now run the Docker container by using Docker commands with required port number mapping.

docker run -d -p 8080:80 my-app

Step 7: Verify the Application

Once Docker container run successfully, Now Its time check the Application running on the mapped port number here we use 8080 with localhost mapping.

Conclusion

Dockerizing Angular Application streamlines the deployment process, enhances, scalability and ensure consistency across the development and production environments. Above we provide step by step process from angular application creation to dockerize angular application by using angular and docker commands.

How can I pass environment variables to my Angular app in Docker?

You can use Docker's -e flag in docker run to pass environment variables to our angular application.

Can Docker containers communicate with each other?

Yes, Docker containers can communicate either through links or by using Docker networks to connect multiple containers together.

How do I debug issues within a Dockerized Angular application?

Use docker logs command to check container logs.

How to Dockerize an ExpressJS App ?

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