How to get the mapped port on host from a docker container?

Question

I want to run a task in some docker containers on different hosts. And I have written a manager app to manage the containers(start task, stop task, get status, etc...) . Once a

Answer 1

Once a container is started, it will send an http request to the manager with its address and port

This isn't going to be working. From inside a container you cannot figure out to which docker host port a container port is mapped to.

What I can think about which would work and be the closest to what you describe is making the container open a websocket connection to the manager. Such a connection would allow two ways communication between your manager and container while still being over HTTP.

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What you are trying to achieve is called service discovery. There are already tools for service discovery that work with Docker. You should pick one of them instead of trying to make your own.

See for instance:

• etcd
• consul
• zookeeper

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If you really want to implement your service discovery system, one way to go is to have your manager use the docker event command (or one of the docker client librairies). This would enable your manager to get notified of containers creations/deletions with nothing to do on the container side.

Then query the docker host to figure out the ports that are mapped to your containers with docker port.