CODEWITHSUNDEEP
dockersolrdocker-compose
gravetii
gravetii

Reputation: 9624

Is it correct practice to set up a docker container specially for running data migration scripts for a DB in another container?

This is my docker-compose.yml - 

version: "3"

services:
  solr:
    build: ./services/solr
    ports:
      - "8983:8983"
    container_name: solr
    volumes:
      - ./services/solr/config/my_collection:/config/my_collection

  solr_data_loader:
    build: ./services/solr_data_loader
    container_name: solr_data_loader
    volumes:
      - ./services/solr_data_loader/data:/opt/data
    restart: always
    depends_on:
      - solr

As you can see, I have a service named solr that uses the official solr image from docker hub. Along with that, I have another service named solr_data_loader that copies data from local into Solr using a bash script by running a cURL command to the solr UI with this REST endpoint - http://solr:8983/solr/my_collection/update/csv?commit=true".

My question is - is the way my solr_data_loader set up considered as good practice with respect to how docker containers are supposed to work? Of course, I could just run a separate bash script to do this data transfer job, but this seems like a lot cleaner approach to me to have a separate container that goes down after doing the job.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 91

Answers (1)

Daniel Zerlett
Daniel Zerlett

Reputation: 81

I think this is perfectly fine. In some scenarios, it is difficult or simply not possible to run shell commands (i.e. Kubernetes, Docker Swarm), so starting a separate container for configuration and migration tasks is a common practice.

You may even consider to do this without an HTTP endpoint, but start the migration on container start and let the container exit after the migration completes depending on your deployment infrastructure.

Another aspect is testing. You can easily set up a docker-compose with your database, the migration container and check if the container works as intended. Sure, this would be possible with a shell script too, but having only one type of deployment artifact (docker image) is very elegant too.

Upvotes: 1

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