Dockerizing a Ruby on Rails Application

Introduction

In this tutorial, you will learn how to dockerize a Ruby on Rails application. The application we’re going to build will make use of PostgreSQL, Redis, and Sidekiq.

We’ll also be using Unicorn and Nginx in both development and production. If you would prefer to use Puma or something else, this shouldn’t be an issue.

After reading this article:

• You will have a basic idea of what Docker is.
• How Docker can help you to streamline development.
• How you can use Continuous Integration and Delivery (CI/CD) to build and test your Ruby projects.

You can find the complete code for this tutorial in this repository .

What is Docker?

Docker allows you to package up an application or service with all of its dependencies into a standardized unit. This unit is typically labeled as a Docker image.

Everything the application needs to run is included. The Docker image contains the code, runtime, system libraries and anything else you would install on a server to make it run if you weren’t using Docker.

What Makes Docker Different from a Virtual Machine

You may have used Vagrant, VirtualBox, or VMWare to run a virtual machine. They allow you to isolate services, but there are a few major differences that make virtual machines much less efficient.

For starters, you need to have an entire guest operating system for each application you want to isolate. It also takes many seconds to boot-up a virtual machine, and each VM can potentially be gigabytes in size.

Docker containers share your host’s kernel, and isolation is done using cgroups and other linux kernel libraries. Docker is very lightweight—it typically takes a few milliseconds for a container to start, and running a container doesn’t use much disk space at all.

What’s the Bottom Line?

What ifyou could develop your Rails application in isolation on your work station without using RVM or chruby , and changing Ruby versions were super easy?

What ifas a consultant or freelancer with 10 Rails projects, you had everything you needed isolated for each project without needing to waste precious SSD disk space?

What ifyou could spin up your Rails, PostgreSQL, Redis, and Sidekiq stack in about 3 seconds?

What ifyou wanted to share your project on GitHub and other developers only had to run a single command to get everything running in minutes?

All of this and much more is possible thanks to Docker.

The Benefits of Using Docker

If you’re constantly looking for ways to improve your productivity and make the overall software development experience better, you’ll appreciate the following 5 key benefits Docker offers:

1. Cross Environment Consistency

Docker allows you to encapsulate your application in such a way that you can easily move it between environments. It will work properly in all environments and on all machines capable of running Docker.

2. Expand Your Development Team Painlessly

You should not have to hand over a 30 page document to a new developer to teach them how to set up your application so they can run it locally. This process can take all day or longer, and the new developer is bound to make mistakes.

With Docker all developers in your team can get your multi-service application running on their workstation in an automated, repeatable, and efficient way. You just run a few commands, and minutes later it all works.

3. Use Whatever Technology Fits Best

If you’re a startup or a shop that uses only one language, you could be putting yourself at a disadvantage. Since you can isolate an application in a Docker container, it becomes possible to broaden your horizons as a developer by experimenting with new languages and frameworks.

You no longer have to worry about other developers having to set up your technology of choice. You can hand them a Docker image and tell them to run it.

4. Build Your Image Once and Deploy It Many Times

Since your applications are inside of a pre-built Docker image, they can be started in milliseconds. This makes it very easy to scale up and down.

Time-consuming tasks such as installing dependencies only need to be run once at build time. Once the image has been built, you can move it around to many hosts.

This not only helps with scaling up and down quickly, but it also makes your deployments more predictable and resilient.

5. Developers and Operation Managers Can Work Together

Docker’s toolset allows developers and operation managers to work together towards the common goal of deploying an application.

Docker acts as an abstraction. You can distribute an application, and members of another team do not need to know how to configure or set up its environment.

It also becomes simple to distribute your Docker images publicly or privately. You can keep tabs of what changed when new versions were pushed and more.

Prerequisites

You will need to install Docker. Docker can be run on most major Linux distributions, and there are tools to let you run it on OSX and Windows too.

This tutorial focuses on Linux users, but it will include comments when things need to be adjusted for OSX or Windows.

Installing Docker

Follow one of the installation guides below for your operating system:

• Linux: https://docs.docker.com/get-started/
• Windows and Mac: https://www.docker.com/products/docker-desktop

Before proceeding, you should have Docker installed and you need to have completed at least the hello world example included in one of the installation guides above.

The Rails Application

The application we’re going to build will be for the latest version of Rails 6 which happens to be 6.0.2 at the time of writing.

Create a Repository

Create a new GitHub repository to host your code:

• Follow the instructions to create a repo .
• Set the language to Rails:

• Create the repository.
• Clone it to your machine:

$ git clone YOUR_REPOSITORY_URL

Generating a New Rails Application

We’re going to generate a new Rails project without even needing Ruby installed on our work station. We can do this by using the official Ruby Docker image.

Creating a Rails Image

We’ll install Rails on a Docker container. For that, we’ll need a Dockerfile . A Dockerfile contains all the commands that you would need to install the programs and libraries. It uses a special syntax that is easy to read.

Create a file called Dockerfile.rails :

# Dockerfile.rails

FROM ruby:2.7
MAINTAINER maintainer@example.com

ARG USER_ID
ARG GROUP_ID

RUN addgroup --gid $GROUP_ID user
RUN adduser --disabled-password --gecos '' --uid $USER_ID --gid $GROUP_ID user

ENV INSTALL_PATH /opt/app
RUN mkdir -p $INSTALL_PATH

RUN gem install rails bundler
RUN chown -R user:user /opt/app
WORKDIR /opt/app

USER $USER_ID
CMD ["/bin/sh"]

The basic Dockerfile commands are:

• FROM : defines what image to start from. We’ll use the official Ruby image as a starting point.
• ARG : specifies build-time argument variables. If your workstation is running Linux, the user and group ids should match between the host and the docker container.
• RUN : executes commands inside the container. In the example, we use it to create a user and group and then to install the Rails gems.
• ENV : defines environment variables.
• WORKDIR : changes the current directory inside the container.
• USER : changes the active user inside the container.
• CMD : defines the program to run when the container starts.

To build the image:

$  docker build -t rails-toolbox \
       --build-arg USER_ID=$(id -u)  \
       --build-arg GROUP_ID=$(id -g) \
       -f Dockerfile.rails .

Creating the Project

We’ll use the new Rails image to create our project:

# OSX/Windows users will want to remove --­­user "$(id -­u):$(id -­g)"
$ docker run -it \
    -v $PWD:/opt/app \
    rails-toolbox rails new --skip-bundle drkiq

Docker run starts a new container and runs a program inside:

-it
-v $PWD:/opt/app
rails new --skip-bundle drkiq

After running the command, you should find a new directory with Ruby files. It has a brand new Rails project.

Rails new creates a new git repository, but since we already have one at the top level of the project, we won’t need it, you can delete it:

$ rm -rf drkiq/.git

Setting Up a Strong Base

Before we start adding Docker-specific files to the project, let’s add a few gems to our Gemfile and make a few adjustments to our application to make it production-ready.

Modifying the Gemfile

Add the following lines to the bottom of your Gemfile :

gem 'unicorn', '~> 5.5.2'
gem 'pg', '~> 1.2.2'
gem 'sidekiq', '~> 6.0.4'
gem 'redis-rails', '~> 5.0.2'

DRYing Out the Database Configuration

Change your config/database.yml to look like this:

---

development:
  url: <%= ENV['DATABASE_URL'].gsub('?', '_development?') %>

test:
  url: <%= ENV['DATABASE_URL'].gsub('?', '_test?') %>

staging:
  url: <%= ENV['DATABASE_URL'].gsub('?', '_staging?') %>

production:
  url: <%= ENV['DATABASE_URL'].gsub('?', '_production?') %>

We will be using environment variables to configure our application. The above file allows us to use the DATABASE_URL , while also allowing us to name our databases based on the environment in which they are being run.

DRYing Out the Secrets File

Create a config/secrets.yml file, it should look like this:

development: &default
  secret_key_base: <%= ENV['SECRET_TOKEN'] %>

test:
  <<: *default

staging:
  <<: *default

production:
  <<: *default

YAML is a markup language. If you’ve never seen this syntax before, it involves setting each environment to use the same SECRET_TOKEN environment variable.

This is fine since the value will be different in each environment.

Editing the Application Configuration

Add the following lines to your config/application.rb :

# ...

module Drkiq
  class Application < Rails::Application
    # We want to set up a custom logger which logs to STDOUT.
    # Docker expects your application to log to STDOUT/STDERR and to be ran
    # in the foreground.
    config.log_level = :debug
    config.log_tags  = [:subdomain, :uuid]
    config.logger    = ActiveSupport::TaggedLogging.new(Logger.new(STDOUT))

    # Since we're using Redis for Sidekiq, we might as well use Redis to back
    # our cache store. This keeps our application stateless as well.
    config.cache_store = :redis_store, ENV['CACHE_URL'],
                         { namespace: 'drkiq::cache' }

    # If you've never dealt with background workers before, this is the Rails
    # way to use them through Active Job. We just need to tell it to use Sidekiq.
    config.active_job.queue_adapter = :sidekiq

    # ...
  end
end

Creating the Unicorn Config

Next, create the config/unicorn.rb file and add the following content to it:

# Heavily inspired by GitLab:
# https://github.com/gitlabhq/gitlabhq/blob/master/config/unicorn.rb.example

# Go with at least 1 per CPU core, a higher amount will usually help for fast
# responses such as reading from a cache.
worker_processes ENV['WORKER_PROCESSES'].to_i

# Listen on a tcp port or unix socket.
listen ENV['LISTEN_ON']

# Use a shorter timeout instead of the 60s default. If you are handling large
# uploads you may want to increase this.
timeout 30

# Combine Ruby 2.0.0dev or REE with "preload_app true" for memory savings:
# http://rubyenterpriseedition.com/faq.html#adapt_apps_for_cow
preload_app true
GC.respond_to?(:copy_on_write_friendly=) && GC.copy_on_write_friendly = true

# Enable this flag to have unicorn test client connections by writing the
# beginning of the HTTP headers before calling the application. This
# prevents calling the application for connections that have disconnected
# while queued. This is only guaranteed to detect clients on the same
# host unicorn runs on, and unlikely to detect disconnects even on a
# fast LAN.
check_client_connection false

before_fork do |server, worker|
  # Don't bother having the master process hang onto older connections.
  defined?(ActiveRecord::Base) && ActiveRecord::Base.connection.disconnect!

  # The following is only recommended for memory/DB-constrained
  # installations. It is not needed if your system can house
  # twice as many worker_processes as you have configured.
  #
  # This allows a new master process to incrementally
  # phase out the old master process with SIGTTOU to avoid a
  # thundering herd (especially in the "preload_app false" case)
  # when doing a transparent upgrade. The last worker spawned
  # will then kill off the old master process with a SIGQUIT.
  old_pid = "#{server.config[:pid]}.oldbin"
  if old_pid != server.pid
    begin
      sig = (worker.nr + 1) >= server.worker_processes ? :QUIT : :TTOU
      Process.kill(sig, File.read(old_pid).to_i)
    rescue Errno::ENOENT, Errno::ESRCH
    end
  end

  # Throttle the master from forking too quickly by sleeping. Due
  # to the implementation of standard Unix signal handlers, this
  # helps (but does not completely) prevent identical, repeated signals
  # from being lost when the receiving process is busy.
  # sleep 1
end

after_fork do |server, worker|
  # Per-process listener ports for debugging, admin, migrations, etc..
  # addr = "127.0.0.1:#{9293 + worker.nr}"
  # server.listen(addr, tries: -1, delay: 5, tcp_nopush: true)

  defined?(ActiveRecord::Base) && ActiveRecord::Base.establish_connection

  # If preload_app is true, then you may also want to check and
  # restart any other shared sockets/descriptors such as Memcached,
  # and Redis. TokyoCabinet file handles are safe to reuse
  # between any number of forked children (assuming your kernel
  # correctly implements pread()/pwrite() system calls).
end

Creating the Sidekiq Initialize Config

Now you can also create the config/initializers/sidekiq.rb file and add the following code to it:

sidekiq_config = { url: ENV['JOB_WORKER_URL'] }

Sidekiq.configure_server do |config|
  config.redis = sidekiq_config
end

Sidekiq.configure_client do |config|
  config.redis = sidekiq_config
end

Whitelist Docker Host

Rails have a security features that blocks access from unknown sources. We want our different docker containers to communicate with each other, so we need to whitelist the drkiq container.

Edit the config/environment/development.rb file and add the following line:

config.hosts << "drkiq"

Creating the Environment Variable File

Last but not least, you need to create an environment file. Go to the top directory of your project, and create a new file next to your Dockerfile.rails file:

$ cd ..
$ touch env-example

The contents of the example environment are:

# Docker user and group ids
# On linux these should match your ids
USER_ID=1000
GROUP_ID=1000

# You would typically use rake secret to generate a secure token. It is
# critical that you keep this value private in production.
SECRET_TOKEN=Wa4Kdu6hMt3tYKm4jb9p4vZUuc7jBVFw

# Unicorn is more than capable of spawning multiple workers, and in production
# you would want to increase this value but in development you should keep it
# set to 1.
#
# It becomes difficult to properly debug code if there's multiple copies of
# your application running via workers and/or threads.
WORKER_PROCESSES=1

# This will be the address and port that Unicorn binds to. The only real
# reason you would ever change this is if you have another service running
# that must be on port 8010.
LISTEN_ON=0.0.0.0:8010

# This is how we'll connect to PostgreSQL. It's good practice to keep the
# username lined up with your application's name but it's not necessary.
#
# Since we're dealing with development mode, it's ok to have a weak password
# such as yourpassword but in production you'll definitely want a better one.
#
# Eventually we'll be running everything in Docker containers, and you can set
# the host to be equal to postgres thanks to how Docker allows you to link
# containers.
#
# Everything else is standard Rails configuration for a PostgreSQL database.
DATABASE_URL=postgresql://drkiq:test_db_password@postgres:5432/drkiq?encoding=utf8&pool=5&timeout=5000

# Both of these values are using the same Redis address but in a real
# production environment you may want to separate Sidekiq to its own instance,
# which is why they are separated here.
#
# We'll be using the same Docker link trick for Redis which is how we can
# reference the Redis hostname as redis.
CACHE_URL=redis://redis:6379/0
JOB_WORKER_URL=redis://redis:6379/0

Copy the example file and customize it to your liking . The SECRET_TOKEN should be a random string. The final .env file is secret and should never be checked into git:

$ cp env-example .env
$ echo ".env" >> .gitignore

The above file allows us to configure the application without having to dive into the application code.

This file would also hold information like mail login credentials or API keys.

Dockerizing Your Rails Application

Create the Dockerfile file and add the following content to it:

# Dockerfile - Development environment
FROM ruby:2.7 
MAINTAINER maintainer@example.com

ARG USER_ID
ARG GROUP_ID

RUN addgroup --gid $GROUP_ID user
RUN adduser --disabled-password --gecos '' --uid $USER_ID --gid $GROUP_ID user

ENV INSTALL_PATH /opt/app
RUN mkdir -p $INSTALL_PATH

# nodejs
RUN curl -sS https://dl.yarnpkg.com/debian/pubkey.gpg -o /root/yarn-pubkey.gpg && apt-key add /root/yarn-pubkey.gpg
RUN echo "deb https://dl.yarnpkg.com/debian/ stable main" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/yarn.list
RUN apt-get update && apt-get install -y --no-install-recommends nodejs yarn

# rails
RUN gem install rails bundler
COPY drkiq/Gemfile Gemfile
WORKDIR /opt/app/drkiq
RUN bundle install

RUN chown -R user:user /opt/app
USER $USER_ID
VOLUME ["$INSTALL_PATH/public"]
CMD bundle exec unicorn -c config/unicorn.rb

The above file creates the Docker image with:

• NodeJS and Yarn
• Rails
• Gems in the Gemfile

The last part of the Dockerfile sets the correct user and file permissions and starts the unicorn HTTP server.

Configuring Ngnix

While unicorn is perfectly capable of serving our application, for better performance and security, it’s recommended to put a real HTTP server in front. An HTTP server configured as a reverse-proxy protects our application from slow clients and speeds up connections thanks to caching.

We’ll use Nginx , a general-purpose HTTP server in our setup.

Create a configuration file for Ngnix, the file is called reverse-proxy.conf and is at the root directory of your project, next to the other Dockefiles:

# reverse-proxy.conf

server {
    listen 8020;
    server_name example.org;

    location / {
        proxy_pass http://drkiq:8010;
        proxy_set_header Host $host;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
    }
}

Create a new file called Dockerfile.nginx to build our custom Nginx image:

# Dockerfile.nginx

FROM nginx:latest
COPY reverse-proxy.conf /etc/nginx/conf.d/reverse-proxy.conf
EXPOSE 8020
STOPSIGNAL SIGTERM
CMD ["nginx", "-g", "daemon off;"]

Creating a dockerignore File

Next, create the .dockerignore file and add the following content to it:

.git
.dockerignore
.env

This file is similar to .gitgnore . It will exclude matching files and folders from being built into your Docker image.

What is Docker Compose?

Docker Compose allows you to run 1 or more Docker containers easily. You can define everything in YAML and commit this file so that other developers can simply run docker-compose up and have everything running quickly.

Creating the Docker Compose Configuration File

Next, we will create the docker-compose.yml file and copy the following content into it:

version: "3.7"

services:

  postgres:
    image: postgres:12.1
    environment:
      POSTGRES_USER: drkiq
      POSTGRES_PASSWORD: test_db_password
    ports: 
      - '5432:5432'
    volumes:
      - drkiq-postgres:/var/lib/postgresql/data

  redis:
    image: redis:5.0.7
    ports:
      - '6379:6379'
    volumes:
      - drkiq-redis:/var/lib/redis/data

  drkiq:
    build:
      context: .
      args:
        USER_ID: "${USER_ID:-1000}"
        GROUP_ID: "${GROUP_ID:-1000}"
    depends_on:
      - postgres
      - redis
    volumes:
      - type: bind
        source: ./drkiq
        target: /opt/app/drkiq
    ports:
      - '8010:8010'
    env_file:
      - .env

  sidekiq:
    build:
      context: .
      args:
        USER_ID: "${USER_ID:-1000}"
        GROUP_ID: "${GROUP_ID:-1000}"
    command: bundle exec sidekiq 
    depends_on:
      - postgres
      - redis
    volumes:
      - type: bind
        source: ./drkiq
        target: /opt/app/drkiq
    env_file:
      - .env

  nginx:
    build:
      context: .
      dockerfile: ./Dockerfile.nginx
    depends_on:
      - drkiq
    ports:
      - '8020:8020'

volumes:
  drkiq-postgres:
  drkiq-redis:

Everything in the above file is documented on Docker Compose ‘s website. The short version is:

• Postgres and Redis use Docker volumes to manage persistence
• Postgres, Redis and Drkiq all expose a port
• Drkiq and Sidekiq both use volumes to mount in app code for live editing.
• Drkiq and Sidekiq both have links to Postgres and Redis.
• Drkiq and Sidekiq both read in environment variables from .env
• Sidekiq overwrites the default CMD to run Sidekiq instead of Unicorn.

Creating the Volumes

In the docker-compose.yml file, we’re referencing volumes that do not exist. We can create them by running:

$ docker volume create --name drkiq-postgres
$ docker volume create --name drkiq-redis

When data is saved in PostgreSQL or Redis, it is saved to these volumes on your work station. This way, you won’t lose your data when you restart the service because Docker containers are stateless.

Running Everything

Now it’s time to put everything together and start-up our stack by running the following:

$ docker-compose up

The first time this command runs it will take quite a while because it needs to pull down all of the Docker images that our application requires.

This operation is mostly bound by network speed, so your times may vary.

At some point, it’s going to begin building the Rails application. You will eventually see the terminal output, including lines similar to these:

postgres_1  | ...
redis_1     | ...
drkiq_1     | ...
sidekiq_1   | ...
nginx_1     | ...

You will notice that the drkiq_1 container threw an error saying the database doesn’t exist. This is a completely normal error to expect when running a Rails application because we haven’t initialized the database yet.

Initialize the Database

Hit CTRL+C in the terminal to stop everything. If you see any errors, you can safely ignore them.

Run the following commands to initialize the database:

# OSX/Windows users will want to remove --­­user "$(id -­u):$(id -­g)"
$ docker­-compose run --­­user "$(id ­-u):$(id -­g)" drkiq rake db:reset
$ docker­-compose run --­­user "$(id ­-u):$(id -­g)" drkiq rake db:migrate

The first command should warn you that db/schema.rb doesn’t exist yet, which is normal. Run the second command to remedy that. It should run successfully.

If you head over to the db folder in your project, you should notice that there is a schema.rb file and that it’s owned by your user.

You may also have noticed that running either of the commands above also started Redis and PostgreSQL automatically. This is because we have them defined as links. docker-compose is smart enough to start dependencies.

Running Everything, Round 2

Now that our database is initialized, try running the following:

$ docker-compose up

Testing It Out

Head over to http://localhost:8020

You should be greeted with the typical Rails introduction page.

Working with the Rails Application

Now that we’ve Dockerized our application, let’s start adding features to it to exercise the commands you’ll need to run to interact with your Rails application.

Right now the source code is on your work station, and that source code is being mounted into the Docker container in real-time through a volume.

This means that if you were to edit a file, the changes would take effect instantly, but right now we have no routes or any CSS defined to test this.

Generating a Controller

Run the following command to generate a Pages controller with a home action:

# OSX/Windows users will want to remove --­­user "$(id -­u):$(id -­g)"
docker-­compose run --­­user "$(id -­u):$(id -­g)" drkiq rails g controller Pages home

In a second or two, it should provide everything you would expect when generating a new controller.

This type of command is how you’ll run future Rails commands. If you wanted to generate a model or run a migration, you would run them in the same way.

Modify the Routes File

Remove the get 'pages/home' line near the top of config/routes.rb and replace it with the following:

root 'pages#home'

If you go back to your browser, you should see the new home page we have set up.

Adding a New Job

Use the following to add a new job:

# OSX/Windows users will want to remove --­­user "$(id -­u):$(id -­g)"
docker-­compose run --­­user "$(id -­u):$(id -­g)" drkiq rails g job counter

Modifying the Counter Job

Next, replace the perform function in app/job/counter_job.rb to look like this:

def perform(*args)
  21 + 21
end

Modifying the Pages Controller

Replace the home action in app/controllers/pages_controller.rb to look like this:

def home
  # We are executing the job on the spot rather than in the background to
  # exercise using Sidekiq in a trivial example.
  #
  # Consult with the Rails documentation to learn more about Active Job:
  # http://edgeguides.rubyonrails.org/active_job_basics.html
  @meaning_of_life = CounterJob.perform_now
end

Modifying the Home View

The next step is to replace the app/views/pages/home.html.erb file to look as follows:

<h1>The meaning of life is <%= @meaning_of_life %></h1>

Compile Assets

With everything ready, we should precompile the CSS and JavaScript code and use webpack to optimize them. This saves up bandwith and improves user’s experience:

# OSX/Windows users will want to remove --­­user "$(id -­u):$(id -­g)"
$ docker-compose run --user "$(id -u):$(id -g)" drkiq rails webpacker:install
$ docker-compose run --user "$(id -u):$(id -g)" drkiq rails assets:precompile

Restart the Rails Application

You need to restart the Rails server to pick up new jobs, so hit CTRL+C to stop everything, and then run docker-compose up again.

If you reload the website you should see the changes we made.

Experimenting on Your Own

Here are three things you should do to familiarize yourself with your new application:

h1

All of these things can be done without having to restart anything, so feel free to check out the changes after you have performed each one.

Adding Some Tests

We can add some testing code to our application. Having tests will help us detect failures and weed out bugs.

Rails will search for test files in the test directory.

Create a test for the CounterJob job. Create a file called test/job/counter_job_test.rb:

require 'test_helper'

class CounterJobTest < ActiveJob::TestCase
  test "returns 42" do
     assert_equal 42, CounterJob.perform_now
  end
end

Let’s add a second test for the Pages controller. Create a file called test/controllers/pages_controller_test.rb :

require 'test_helper'

class PagesControllerTest < ActionDispatch::IntegrationTest
  test "should get home" do
    get "/"
    assert_response :success
  end
end

To run the tests:

# OSX/Windows users will want to remove --­­user "$(id -­u):$(id -­g)"
$ docker-compose  run --user "$(id -u):$(id -g)" drkiq rails test

...
Finished in 4.850950s, 0.4123 runs/s, 0.4123 assertions/s.
2 runs, 2 assertions, 0 failures, 0 errors, 0 skips

Before continuing, ensure that all your code is checked in GitHub:

$ git add -A 
$ git commit -m "initial commit"
$ git push origin master

Continuous Integration for Docker projects on Semaphore

With the help of Docker, we created a portable environment that we can share with other developers. In this section, we’ll learn how we can build Docker images to deploy to production.

Continuous Integration (CI) is a software development practice that creates a strong feedback loop that encircles coding and testing. When we make a modification to the code, the CI system picks it up and runs it through aCI Pipeline. The pipeline builds and tests the code and we get an immediate result.

Prerequisites

We’ll need additional services to build and test the Docker images in a scalable way:

• Docker Hub :
  • Create a free account using the Get Started button. Docker Hub provides unlimited public repositories for free.
• Semaphore :
  • Head to Semaphore and sign up using the TRY it Free button. Use your GitHub account to log in.

Next, we have to tell Semaphore how to connect with your Docker Hub account:

• Go to your Semaphore account.
• On the left navigation menu, click on Secrets below Configuration:

• Click on Create New Secret.
• Create a secret called “dockerhub” with the following details:

  DOCKER_USERNAME
  DOCKER_PASSWORD
  

• Click on Save Secret .

Production Images

Our Docker images work very well for development but are not suitable for production. For one thing, our images are not portable, they don’t contain our application code.

We’ll create new images that are independent and can be deployed anywhere.

Create a file called Dockerfile.production with the following contents:

# Dockerfile.production
FROM ruby:2.7
MAINTAINER maintainer@example.com

ARG USER_ID
ARG GROUP_ID

RUN addgroup --gid $GROUP_ID user
RUN adduser --disabled-password --gecos '' --uid $USER_ID --gid $GROUP_ID user

ENV INSTALL_PATH /opt/app
RUN mkdir -p $INSTALL_PATH

RUN curl -sS https://dl.yarnpkg.com/debian/pubkey.gpg -o /root/yarn-pubkey.gpg && apt-key add /root/yarn-pubkey.gpg
RUN echo "deb https://dl.yarnpkg.com/debian/ stable main" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/yarn.list
RUN apt-get update && apt-get install -y --no-install-recommends nodejs yarn

RUN gem install rails bundler

COPY drkiq/Gemfile Gemfile
WORKDIR /opt/app/drkiq
RUN bundle install

COPY drkiq/ .
RUN chown -R user:user /opt/app
USER $USER_ID
RUN yarn install --check-files
RUN rails webpacker:install
RUN rails assets:precompile
VOLUME ["$INSTALL_PATH/public"]
CMD bundle exec unicorn -c config/unicorn.rb

If you compare the development and production Dockerfiles, you’ll find that the main differences are:

• We use the COPY command to copy all the code directory inside the container.
• We run the install and setup commands for yarn and rails , so the image has all the assets precompiled.

Push the new Dockerfile to GitHub:

$ git add Dockerfile.production
$ git commit -m "add dockerfile"
$ git push origin master

Continuous Integration Pipeline

You can set up a CI pipeline with a few clicks:

• Open your Semaphore account.
• On the left navigation menu, click on the + (plus sign) next to Projects :

• Find your repository and click on Choose :

• Select the Docker starter workflow. Click on Customize it first :

The Workflow Builder main components are:

• Pipeline : A pipeline has a specific objective, e.g. building. Pipelines are made of blocks that are executed from left to right in an agent.
• Agent : The agent is the virtual machine that powers the pipeline. We have threemachine types to choose from. The machine runs an optimizedUbuntu 18.04 image with build tools for many languages.
• Block : blocks group jobs that can be executed in parallel. Jobs in a block usually have similar commands and configurations. Once all jobs in a block complete, the next block begins.
• Job : jobs define the commands that do the work. They inherit their configuration from their parent block.

Build Block

The Build block creates our Docker images:

• Click on the Build block.
• Open the Secrets section and check the dockerhub item. This will import your Docker Hub credentials to all job in the block.
• Open the Prologue section and type the following commands in the box:

checkout
echo "${DOCKER_PASSWORD}" | docker login -u "${DOCKER_USERNAME}" --password-stdin

• Click on the build job, rename it to “Build drkiq”.
• Type the following commands in the box:

docker pull $DOCKER_USERNAME/dockerizing-ruby-drkiq:latest || true
docker build -t $DOCKER_USERNAME/dockerizing-ruby-drkiq:latest --cache-from=$DOCKER_USERNAME/dockerizing-ruby-drkiq:latest --build-arg USER_ID=$(id -u) --build-arg GROUP_ID=$(id -g) -f Dockerfile.production .
docker push $DOCKER_USERNAME/dockerizing-ruby-drkiq:latest

Already, we’re learning so much about how a Pipeline works:

• Prologue : the prologue is executed before each job in the block. Typically, it holds common set up commands.
• Checkout : checkout clones the GitHub repository into the CI environment.
• Docker login : connects the CI environment with your Docker Hub account.
• Docker Pull/Push : copies the image from and to Docker Hub. Before building, we copy the last image so we can benefit from Docker’s cache optimization.

To run the pipeline:

• Click on Run the Workflow button.
• Set the branch to master .
• Click on Start .
• The pipeline starts immediately:

When complete, head over your Docker Hub account, you should see a brand new image called dockerizing-ruby-drkiq :

Build Block Revisited

We’ll modify the build block to create the Nginx image:

• Click on Edit Workflow on the top-right corner.
• Click on the Build block.
• Click on + Add another job :

• Set the name of the job to “Build nginx”.
• Type the following commands in the box:

docker pull $DOCKER_USERNAME/dockerizing-ruby-nginx:latest || true
docker build -t $DOCKER_USERNAME/dockerizing-ruby-nginx:latest --cache-from=$DOCKER_USERNAME/dockerizing-ruby-nginx:latest -f Dockerfile.nginx .
docker push $DOCKER_USERNAME/dockerizing-ruby-nginx:latest

• Click on Run the Workflow and Start .

This time the pipeline builds our two images:

Running Tests

A CI pipeline wouldn’t be complete without tests. We’ll add a test job to check that the images are working.

The test block will:

• Pull the images built in the previous block
• Create the docker volumes
• Initialize the database
• Run the Rails tests using Docker Compose.

First, lets create a testing only Docker Compose file called docker-compose.test.yml :

# docker-compose.test.yml
version: "3.7"

services:

  postgres:
    image: postgres:12.1
    environment:
      POSTGRES_USER: drkiq
      POSTGRES_PASSWORD: test_db_password
    ports: 
      - '5432:5432'
    volumes:
      - drkiq-postgres:/var/lib/postgresql/data

  redis:
    image: redis:5.0.7
    ports:
      - '6379:6379'
    volumes:
      - drkiq-redis:/var/lib/redis/data

  drkiq:
    image: $DOCKER_USERNAME/dockerizing-ruby-drkiq:latest
    links:
      - postgres
      - redis
    ports:
      - '8010:8010'
    env_file:
      - .env

  sidekiq:
    image: $DOCKER_USERNAME/dockerizing-ruby-drkiq:latest
    command: bundle exec sidekiq 
    links:
      - postgres
      - redis
    env_file:
      - .env

  nginx:
    image: $DOCKER_USERNAME/dockerizing-ruby-nginx:latest
    links:
      - drkiq
    ports:
      - '8020:8020'

volumes:
  drkiq-postgres:
  drkiq-redis:

The development and test compose files are pretty similar. The only difference is that, in test we reference the image by name, we don’t build the image. We do this because we want to test the images that were uploaded to DockerHub, we don’t want to build new ones.

Push the new file to GitHub:

$ git pull origin master
$ git add docker-compose.test.yml
$ git commit -m "add test docker compose"
$ git push  origin master

To add a test block:

• On Semaphore, click on Edit Workflow .
• Click on the + Add Block dotted box to create a new block.
• Set the name of the block to “Tests”
• Open the Prologue section and type the following commands. The prologue holds the initialization commands we used earlier:

checkout 
cp env-example .env
cat docker-compose.test.yml | envsubst | tee docker-compose.yml
echo "${DOCKER_PASSWORD}" | docker login -u "${DOCKER_USERNAME}" --password-stdin
docker pull $DOCKER_USERNAME/dockerizing-ruby-drkiq:latest || true
docker-compose run --user "$(id -u):$(id -g)" drkiq rake db:reset
docker-compose run --user "$(id -u):$(id -g)" drkiq rake db:migrate

• Open the Secrets section and check the dockerhub item.
• Change the name of the job to “Rails Test”.
• Type the following command in the job’s box:

docker-compose run --user "$(id -u):$(id -g)" drkiq rails test

• Use the Run the Workflow and Start buttons.

After a few seconds we should have the images tested:

Where to Go Next?

Congratulations! You’ve finished dockerizing your Ruby on Rails application.

Dockerizing your application is the first step towards portable and easy deployments. There are many ways of running your dockerized applications:

• Hosted : if you have a server or a virtual machine, you can use Docker Compose to run your application.
• PaaS : you can use a Platform as a Service such as Heroku to run your Docker containers. Check the tutorials below for more information.
• Kubernetes : you can run your containers using an orchestration platform like Kubernetes. Kubernetes provides scalability, great flexibility and no-downtime upgrades. For more information check the tutorials below and read the Docker and Kubernetes introduction page.

P.S. Would you like to learn how to build sustainable Rails apps and ship more often? We’ve recently published an ebook covering just that — “Rails Testing Handbook”. Learn more and download a free copy .

Read next:

To learn how to deploy to Kubernetes check these tutorials:

• Sign up to receive a free ebook guide to CI/CD with Kubernetes
• How to Release Faster with Continuous Delivery for Google Kubernetes
• Continuous Integration and Delivery to AWS Kubernetes
• CI/CD for Spring Boot Microservices
• How To Build and Deploy a Node.js Application To DigitalOcean Kubernetes Using CI/CD
• Continuous Deployment with Google Container Engine and Kubernetes
• Lightweight Docker Images in 5 Steps

To learn about how to deploy to Heroku:

• Continuous Deployment of a Python Flask Application with Docker and Semaphore
• Creating a Heroku-like Deployment Solution with Docker