Run Node/NPM in a Docker container

node-npm-in-docker.sh

# For example, run "npm install"
docker run -v "$PWD":/usr/src/app -w /usr/src/app node:4 npm install

# This command creates a container (downloading one first if you don't have it locally), runs the command in a current directory and quits the container
# Great Success!

On MacOS/Linux with NodeJS 10 LTS:

docker run --user $(id -u):$(id -g) -v $PWD:/app -v $PWD/.npm:/.npm -v $PWD/.config:/.config -w /app node:10.12.0-alpine npm install

Nice work

Why not create a file named 'npm' in '/usr/local/bin' with:

#!/bin/bash
docker run --rm -i --user=$UID:1000 --name=npm-executable -w /usr/app -v $PWD:/usr/app node:10 npm "$@"

then
sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/npm

now you can use npm install, npm run anything, etc.

Hello, I'm new to Docker and lost in your instructions...
What are we supposed to put instead of the c:\path_to_app and the /usr/src/app expressions ?

Thanks for the help !

@clrmahieu you only have to replace the c:\path_to_app with the full path for your app root folder, usually it's your current path where you have your package.json file.

On MacOS/Linux with NodeJS 10 LTS:

docker run --user $(id -u):$(id -g) -v $PWD:/app -v $PWD/.npm:/.npm -v $PWD/.config:/.config -w /app node:10.12.0-alpine npm install

This creates 2 folders .npm and .config within the current project's directory. I would avoid this since you can easily include them in the next commits by mistake.

A better alternative is to mount these folders from your user's home directory:

docker run --user $(id -u):$(id -g) -v $PWD:/app -v $HOME/.npm:/.npm -v $HOME/.config:/.config -w /app node:10.12.0-alpine npm install

Hi there!
There a way to store in VSCode the command line syntaxe to run npm run build from docker container?