How to check if the docker engine and a docker container are running?

Question

In a script, I need to check:

a) Is the docker engine running?
b) Given a container name, is that docker container running?

[the initial wording of this

Answer 1

For OS X users (Mojave 10.14.3)

Here is what i use in my Bash script to test if Docker is running or not

# Check if docker is running
if ! docker info >/dev/null 2>&1; then
    echo "Docker does not seem to be running, run it first and retry"
    exit 1
fi