Docker Compose, Postgres and Travis CI

Today I tried to set up a dockerized Flask app with Postgres database with Travis CI.

It shouldn’t have been difficult because I followed a tutorial.

Setup

Here is the docker-compose.yml:

version: '3.7'

services:
  users:
    build:
      context: ./services/users
      dockerfile: Dockerfile
    volumes:
      - './services/users:/usr/src/app'
    ports:
      - 5001:5000
    environment:
      - FLASK_ENV=development
      - APP_SETTINGS=project.config.DevelopmentConfig
      - DATABASE_URL=postgres://postgres:postgres@users-db:5432/users_dev
      - DATABASE_TEST_URL=postgres://postgres:postgres@users-db:5432/users_test
    depends_on:
      - users-db

  users-db:
    build:
      context: ./services/users/project/db
      dockerfile: Dockerfile
    ports:
      - 5435:5432
    environment:
      - POSTGRES_USER=postgres
      - POSTGRES_PASSWORD=postgres

  nginx:
    build:
      context: ./services/nginx
      dockerfile: Dockerfile
    restart: always
    ports:
      - 80:80
    depends_on:
      - users

There is a Python Flask app that runs as “users”. It depends on a PostgresQL database called “users-db”. The db maps the port 5435 to the standard postgres port 5432.

Here is the Dockerfile (/services/users/Dockerfile):

## base image
FROM python:3.7.2-alpine

## install dependencies
RUN apk update && \
    apk add --virtual build-deps gcc python-dev musl-dev && \
    apk add postgresql-dev && \
    apk add netcat-openbsd

## set working directory
WORKDIR /usr/src/app

## add and install requirements
COPY ./requirements.txt /usr/src/app/requirements.txt
RUN pip install -r requirements.txt

## add entrypoint.sh
COPY ./entrypoint.sh /usr/src/app/entrypoint.sh
RUN chmod +x /usr/src/app/entrypoint.sh

## add app
COPY . /usr/src/app

## run server
CMD ["/usr/src/app/entrypoint.sh"]

The script for the entrypoint makes sure that the database is ready:

#!/bin/sh

echo "Waiting for postgres..."

while ! nc -z users-db 5432; do
  sleep 0.1
done

echo "PostgreSQL started"

For docker-compose 2 you could add a “healthcheck” condition to your configuration. This condition ensured that the container waited until Postgres was ready.
Read more about it at docker-compose-healthcheck.

The condition flag doesn’t work for docker-compose 3.

Now, you have to create shell scripts to wait for the database connection. See “Can this work with v3 of docker compose?” for details.

Travis-CI

Running this build on Travis gave the following error:

could not connect to server: Connection refused
Is the server running on host "users-db" (172.18.0.2) and accepting
TCP/IP connections on port 5432?

This is the configuration (.travis.yml):

sudo: required

services:
  - docker

env:
  DOCKER_COMPOSE_VERSION: 1.23.2

before_install:
  - sudo rm /usr/local/bin/docker-compose
  - curl -L https://github.com/docker/compose/releases/download/${DOCKER_COMPOSE_VERSION}/docker-compose-`uname -s`-`uname -m` > docker-compose
  - chmod +x docker-compose
  - sudo mv docker-compose /usr/local/bin

before_script:
  - docker-compose up -d --build

script:
  - docker-compose exec users python manage.py test
  - docker-compose exec users black project
  - docker-compose exec users flake8 project

after_script:
  - docker-compose down

Add Postgres Image to docker-compose

I spent some time searching for a solution.

The only thing I came up with was to specify the image for the Postgres database:

.docker-compose.yml:


 users-db:
+   image: postgres:10-alpine
    build:
      context: ./services/users/project/db
      dockerfile: Dockerfile
    ports:
      - 5435:5432
    environment:
      - POSTGRES_USER=postgres
      - POSTGRES_PASSWORD=postgres

Update: Looks like this doesn’t solve the problem. Sometimes the builds of Travis-CI fail because the database isn’t responsive.
If I trigger a new build manually inside the Travis-CI-web-console, the test often work.