Connecting to Postgresql in a docker container from outside

Question

I have Postgresql on a server in a docker container. How can I connect to it from the outside, that is, from my local computer? What setting should I apply to allow that?

Answer 1

You can run Postgres this way (map a port):

docker run --name some-postgres -e POSTGRES_PASSWORD=mysecretpassword -d -p 5432:5432 postgres

So now you have mapped the port 5432 of your container to port 5432 of your server. -p <host_port>:<container_port> .So now your postgres is accessible from your public-server-ip:5432

To test: Run the postgres database (command above)

docker ps
CONTAINER ID        IMAGE               COMMAND                  CREATED             STATUS              PORTS                     NAMES
05b3a3471f6f        postgres            "/docker-entrypoint.s"   1 seconds ago       Up 1 seconds        0.0.0.0:5432->5432/tcp    some-postgres

Go inside your container and create a database:

docker exec -it 05b3a3471f6f bash
root@05b3a3471f6f:/# psql -U postgres
postgres-# CREATE DATABASE mytest;
postgres-# \q

Go to your localhost (where you have some tool or the psql client).

psql -h public-ip-server -p 5432 -U postgres

(password mysecretpassword)

postgres=# \l

                             List of databases
   Name    |  Owner   | Encoding |  Collate   |   Ctype    |   Access privileges
-----------+----------+----------+------------+------------+-----------------------
 mytest    | postgres | UTF8     | en_US.utf8 | en_US.utf8 |
 postgres  | postgres | UTF8     | en_US.utf8 | en_US.utf8 |
 template0 | postgres | UTF8     | en_US.utf8 | en_US.utf8 | =c/postgres   

So you're accessing the database (which is running in docker on a server) from your localhost.

In this post it's expained in detail.

Answer 2

I managed to get it run on linux

• 1 first run the docker postgres, make sure the port is published, I use alpine because it's lightweight.

  sudo docker run --rm -P -p 127.0.0.1:5432:5432 -e POSTGRES_PASSWORD="1234" --name pg postgres:alpine

• 2 use another terminal, access the database from the host using the postgres uri

  psql postgresql://postgres:1234@localhost:5432/postgres

for mac users, replace psql with pgcli

Answer 3

You can also access through docker exec command also.

$ docker exec -it postgres-container bash

# su postgres

$ psql

Answer 4

I already had running postgres on host machine and didn't want to allow connections from network, so I did run temporary postgres instance in container and created database in just two lines:

# Run PostgreSQL
docker run --name postgres-container -e POSTGRES_PASSWORD=password -it -p 5433:5432 postgres

# Create database
docker exec -it postgres-container createdb -U postgres my-db

Answer 5

I tried to connect from localhost (mac) to a postgres container. I changed the port in the docker-compose file from 5432 to 3306 and started the container. No idea why I did it :|

Then I tried to connect to postgres via PSequel and adminer and the connection could not be established.

After switching back to port 5432 all works fine.

  db:
    image: postgres
    ports:
      - 5432:5432
    restart: always
    volumes:
      - "db_sql:/var/lib/mysql"
    environment:
      POSTGRES_USER: root
      POSTGRES_PASSWORD: password
      POSTGRES_DB: postgres_db

This was my experience I wanted to share. Perhaps someone can make use of it.

Answer 6

To connect from the localhost you need to add '--net host':

docker run --name some-postgres --net host -e POSTGRES_PASSWORD=mysecretpassword -d -p 5432:5432 postgres

You can access the server directly without using exec from your localhost, by using:

psql -h localhost -p 5432 -U postgres

Answer 7

I am using django with postgres in Docker containers. in the docker-compose file, add the following:

db:
    image: postgres:10-alpine
    environment:
        - POSTGRES_DB=app
        - POSTGRES_USER=postgres
        - POSTGRES_PASSWORD=supersecretpassword
    **ports:
        - "6543:5432"**

which will add accessible port by your local machine. for myself, I connected DBeaver to it. this will prevent port clashes between your app request and local machine request. at first, I got a message saying that the port 5432 is in use (which is by django app) so I couldn't access by pgAdmin or DBeaver.

Answer 8

first open the docker image for the postgres

docker exec -it <container_name>

then u will get the root --root@868594e88b53:/# it need the database connection

psql postgresql://<username>:<databasepassword>@postgres:5432/<database>

Answer 9

In case, it is a django backend application, you can do something like this.

docker exec -it container_id python manage.py dbshell

Answer 10

There are good answers here but If you like to have some interface for postgres database management, you can install pgAdmin on your local computer and connect to the remote machine using its IP and the postgres exposed port (by default 5432).

Answer 11

For some reason 5432 port seems protected. I changed my port config from 5432:5432to 5416:5432 and the following command worked to connect to your postgres database from outside its docker container:

psql -h localhost -p 5416 -U <my-user> -d <my-database>