Docker compose file to start PG and PGAdmin

docker-compose.yml

version: "3.8"

services:
  pg:
    image: postgres:alpine
    container_name: dev-postgres
    hostname: pg
    environment:
      POSTGRES_USER: me
      POSTGRES_PASSWORD: password
      POSTGRES_DB: my-db
    volumes:
      - ./.data/db:/var/lib/postgresql/data
    networks:
      - db
    healthcheck:
      test: pg_isready -U postgres || exit 1
    stop_grace_period: 1m

  pgadmin:
    image: dpage/pgadmin4
    container_name: dev-pgadmin
    hostname: pgadmin
    environment:
      PGADMIN_DEFAULT_EMAIL: me@example.com
      PGADMIN_DEFAULT_PASSWORD: password
    volumes:
      - ./.data/pgadmin:/var/lib/pgadmin
    ports:
      - 8008:80
    depends_on:
      - postgres
    networks:
      - db

networks:
  db:

How to Use This

1. Copy this gist to a file named docker-compose.yml in any directory.

2. Start the service containers:

   docker-compose up -d

3. Wait for a few minutes as both services take some time to start up.

4. Navigate to http://localhost:8008.

5. Log into PGAdmin using ${PGADMIN_DEFAULT_EMAIL} and ${PGADMIN_DEFAULT_PASSWORD} (as set in docker-compose.yml).

6. Click on Add New Server under Quick Links section.

7. Name the server anything you want, e.g. dev-db.

8. Click on the Connection tab, and fill in the following:

   Field	Value
   Host name/address	pg
   Username	${POSTGRES_USER} or postgres if not set
   Password	${POSTGRES_PASSWORD}

9. Save

When you're done with everything, destroy the containers:

docker-compose down

How to Access PSQL

After you've started the containers:

docker-compose exec -u postgres pg psql ${POSTGRES_DB} ${POSTGRES_USER}

Using the example above, the command would be:

docker-compose exec -u postgres pg psql my-db me

Notes About docker-compose.yml

pg

• You can specify any Postgres username you want, if you leave out POSTGRES_USER, it defaults to postgres.
• You can specify any password you want for the Postgres user.
• You can create a starting database using POSTGRES_DB, in this case my-db, if you leave out this variable, no database will be created by default.
• Notice I'm not exposing Postgres to a host port, since it's not needed in this use case.

pgadmin

• Map host directory to /var/lib/pgadmin so PGAdmin settings are retained.
• We map to http://localhost:8008 so we don't try to use a privileged port.

networks

We define a network named db and attach both services to it. This is what allows us to refer to the pg service by name rather than by IP address.