testcontainers-node: Reusing of docker compose containers is not possible

We have simple use case: We want to spin up some background containers (like a database or a file storage) to run our test against it. The test are cleaning the containers as they need. These containers should be reused on every test run so we save time in every TDD cycle.

We define these containers in a docker-compose.yml and use the docker-compose cli with docker-compose up. docker-compose up reuses the container everytime with the option --no-recreate. This approach is working fine.

If we try that with testcontainers we get everytime the error that the containers are already existing.

const composeFilePath = path.resolve(__dirname, "dir-containing-docker-compose-yml");
const composeFile = "docker-compose.yml";

const await new DockerComposeEnvironment(composeFilePath, composeFile).up();

According to the docs its also not possible to pass in options like --no-recreate.

Is testcontainers made to serve our usecase? Or should we stick to the raw docker-compose cli?

About this issue

Original URL
State: closed
Created 3 years ago
Comments: 16

Most upvoted comments

@kylemillar608 I’ve basically reverted the fix from the first part of this issue and what I’ve done is if withNoRecreate is specified, the project name label is changed from a UUID to a constant, “testcontainers-node” in this case. This means the hash will remain the same across instances and therefore the containers won’t be recreated.

I opted against removing the label altogether if the reaper is disabled because when we start a docker-compose environment, we rely on the label to differentiate between containers we’ve started, and containers which were previously running. Without the label to filter on, if the reaper is enabled we’d kill containers created outside of testcontainers.

cristianrgreco on Nov 11, 2021

I forgot to mention that we are using TESTCONTAINERS_RYUK_DISABLED=true. So we want to really reuse the containers between runs.

When I now use the v7.22.0 like that:

  process.env.TESTCONTAINERS_RYUK_DISABLED = "true";
  
  const composeFilePath = path.resolve(baseDirectory, "local");
  const composeFile = "compose.yml";

  await new DockerComposeEnvironment(composeFilePath, composeFile)
    .withNoRecreate()
    .withWaitStrategy("s3", Wait.forLogMessage("Documentation: https://docs.min.io"))
    .withWaitStrategy("dynamodb", Wait.forLogMessage("CorsParams:"))
    .up();

I will get a

Error: Containers3  Creating
Containerdynamodb  Creating
Error response from daemon: Conflict. The container name "/dynamodb" is already in use by container "7903a6e10837f2d9d930d85f15ec3eb87c2a129973a446c449eaeac269e3ab04". You have to remove (or rename) that container to be able to reuse that name.

So we are not able to run the DockerComposeEnvironment between multiple test runs. Imagine having a npm task like

\\package.json
{
   \\ ...
   "scripts": {
       \\ ...
      "start": "node start-compose.js"
   }
}

Then using this npm run start and after a few minutes a npm run start again. I want to reuse all containers to not wait again for that startup.

tiloio on Nov 8, 2021

Released in v7.22.0

cristianrgreco on Nov 6, 2021

I’ve got it working so that you can do:

await new DockerComposeEnvironment(fixtures, "docker-compose-with-name.yml")
  .withNoRecreate()
  .up();

await new DockerComposeEnvironment(fixtures, "docker-compose-with-name.yml")
  .withNoRecreate()
  .up();

And it won’t conflict. I take it that will work?

cristianrgreco on Nov 5, 2021

@tiloio it seems this does not work because the environments have different ID labels:

    const startedEnvironment1 = await new DockerComposeEnvironment(fixtures, "docker-compose-with-name.yml")
      .withNoRecreate()
      .up();

    const startedEnvironment2 = await new DockerComposeEnvironment(fixtures, "docker-compose-with-name.yml")
      .withNoRecreate()
      .up();

but this will work, is it OK for you?

    const environment = new DockerComposeEnvironment(fixtures, "docker-compose-with-name.yml")
      .withNoRecreate();

    const startedEnvironment1 = await environment.up();
    const startedEnvironment2 = await environment.up();

cristianrgreco on Nov 5, 2021