Dockerfile

• SQL Server for Linux image does not have built in database initialization like MySQL or Postgres. Therefore, we need to create a custom image.
• We use an existing mcr.microsoft.com/mssql/server:2019-CU11-ubuntu-18.04 image as a based image.
• Example content of Dockerfile

# Dockerfile
# https://hub.docker.com/_/microsoft-mssql-server
FROM mcr.microsoft.com/mssql/server:2019-CU11-ubuntu-18.04
EXPOSE 1433
WORKDIR /app
COPY ./entrypoint.sh ./
COPY ./initialize.sh ./
COPY ./init-db.sql ./
USER root
RUN chmod +x ./entrypoint.sh
RUN chmod +x ./initialize.sh
ENTRYPOINT ["./entrypoint.sh"]

entrypoint.sh

• entrypoint.sh is any entry point script that will be run when we launch a container
• This fill does two things, run initialize.sh script and start a SQL server instance.

#!/bin/bash
# entrypoint.sh
# Exit immediately if a command exits with a non-zero status.
set -e
# Run initialize.sh and start SQL Server
 ./initialize.sh & /opt/mssql/bin/sqlservr

initialize.sh and init-db.sql

• initialize.sh is a Bash script that runs sqlcmd Utility and use init-db.sql as a file input.
• Example content of initialize.sh

#!/bin/bash
# initialize.sh
# How to connect to SQL Server:
# https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/linux/quickstart-install-connect-docker?view=sql-server-ver15&pivots=cs1-bash#connect-to-sql-server
# sqlcmd Utility options: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/tools/sqlcmd-utility?view=sql-server-ver15#syntax
INPUT_SQL_FILE="init-db.sql"
until /opt/mssql-tools/bin/sqlcmd -S localhost,1433 -U sa -P "$MSSQL_SA_PASSWORD" -i $INPUT_SQL_FILE > /dev/null 2>&1
do
  echo -e "\033[31mSQL server is unavailable - sleeping"
  sleep 1 # Sleep in a second
done
echo -e "\033[31mDone initialize a database"

• We use init-db.sql to store all SQL statements that will be executed after a SQL server instance is ready.
• Example content of init-db.sql:

-- init-db.sql
CREATE DATABASE nopcommerce;

docker-compose.yml

• Example content of docker-compose.yml

# docker-compose.yml
# https://docs.docker.com/compose/compose-file/compose-file-v3/
version: "3.8"
services:
  web:
    image: nopcommerceteam/nopcommerce:4.40.4
    container_name: ${COMPOSE_PROJECT_NAME:?err}_web
    ports:
      - 8080:80
    volumes:
      # https://github.com/nopSolutions/nopCommerce/blob/develop/Dockerfile#L72
      - nopcommerce_data:/app/App_Data
    networks:
      - compose_network
  db:
    build:
      context: .
      dockerfile: Dockerfile
    container_name: ${COMPOSE_PROJECT_NAME:?err}_db
    ports:
      - 1433:1433
    volumes:
      - mssql_data:/var/opt/mssql/data
      - mssql_log:/var/opt/mssql/log
      - mssql_backup:/var/opt/mssql/backup
    # https://docs.docker.com/compose/compose-file/compose-file-v3/#environment
    environment:
      # List of SQL Server environment variables
      # https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/linux/sql-server-linux-configure-environment-variables?view=sql-server-ver15#environment-variables
      - ACCEPT_EULA=Y
      - MSSQL_PID=Express
      - MSSQL_SA_PASSWORD=12345Abc$$ # Escape $ with $$
      - MSSQL_DATA_DIR=/var/opt/mssql/data
      - MSSQL_LOG_DIR=/var/opt/mssql/log
      - MSSQL_BACKUP_DIR=/var/opt/mssql/backup
    networks:
      - compose_network
# Create name volumes managed by Docker to not lose data when remove a container
# https://docs.docker.com/compose/compose-file/compose-file-v3/#volumes
volumes:
  mssql_data:
  mssql_log:
  mssql_backup:
  nopcommerce_data:
networks:
  compose_network:

.env file

• We can control prefix of our volumes/networks by specific a value of COMPOSE_PROJECT_NAME
• Example content of .env file

# .env
# https://docs.docker.com/compose/reference/envvars/#compose_project_name
# Explicitly set volume's prefix or use -P with a docker run command.
COMPOSE_PROJECT_NAME=nopcommerce_compose

File structure of our nopCommerce Docker compose

tree . -a
.
├── .env
├── Dockerfile
├── docker-compose.yml
├── entrypoint.sh
├── init-db.sql
└── initialize.sh