Containerize a C++ application

Prerequisites

• 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 C++ application, using Docker Compose.

Get the sample application

We're using the same sample repository that you used in the previous sections of this guide. If you haven't already cloned the repository, clone it now:

$ git clone https://github.com/dockersamples/c-plus-plus-docker.git

You should now have the following contents in your c-plus-plus-docker (root) directory.

├── c-plus-plus-docker/
│ ├── compose.yml
│ ├── Dockerfile
│ ├── LICENSE
│ ├── ok_api.cpp
│ └── README.md

To learn more about the files in the repository, see the following:

• Dockerfile
• .dockerignore
• compose.yml

Run the application

Inside the c-plus-plus-docker directory, run the following command in a terminal.

$ docker compose up --build

Open a browser and view the application at http://localhost:8080. You will see a message {"Status" : "OK"} in the browser.

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 c-plus-plus-docker directory, run the following command in a terminal.

$ docker compose up --build -d

Open a browser and view the application at http://localhost:8080.

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 your C++ application using Docker.

Related information:

• Docker Compose overview

Next steps

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