Django shell mode in docker

Question

I am learning how to develop Django application in docker with this official tutorial: https://docs.docker.com/compose/django/

I have successfully run through the tutorial, and

docker-compose run web django-admin.py startproject composeexample . creates the image docker-compose up runs the application

The question is:

I often use python manage.py shell to run Django in shell mode, but I do not know how to achieve that with docker.

Solution 1

I use this command (when run with compose)

docker-compose run <service_name> python manage.py shell   

where <service name> is the name of the docker service(in docker-compose.yml).

So, In your case the command will be

docker-compose run web python manage.py shell   

https://docs.docker.com/compose/reference/run/

When run with Dockerfile

docker exec -it <container_id> python manage.py shell

Solution 2

1. Run docker exec -it --user desired_user your_container bash
   Running this command has similar effect then runing ssh to remote server - after you run this command you will be inside container's bash terminal. You will be able to run all Django's manage.py commands.
2. Inside your container just run python manage.py shell

Solution 3

You can use docker exec in the container to run commands like below.

docker exec -it container_id python manage.py shell

Solution 4

If you're using docker-compose you shouldn't always run additional containers when it's not needed to, as each run will start new container and you'll lose a lot of disk space. So you can end up with running multiple containers when you totally won't have to. Basically it's better to:

1. Start your services once with docker-compose up -d
2. Execute (instead of running) your commands:

docker-compose exec web ./manage.py shell

or, if you don't want to start all services (because, for example - you want to run only one command in Django), then you should pass --rm flag to docker-compose run command, so the container will be removed just after passed command will be finished.

docker-compose run --rm web ./manage.py shell

In this case when you'll escape shell, the container created with run command will be destroyed, so you'll save much space on your disk.

View more solutions