In order to easily package, ship, and run applications as lightweight, portable, and self-sufficient as possible, there is Docker. Docker allows us to run applications virtually everywhere. Therefore this blog post gives some guidance on how Thinkwise applications can be containerized.

There are numerous approaches in how you might want to set up your Docker environment, so we will mainly focus on:

• Running Universal independently;
• Running Indicium independently;
• Running Indicium and Universal together.

At the end of this post, we will uncover our future plans and what we're currently researching/developing.

Prerequisites

To follow along, you'll need to have:

• Docker installed on your desktop or server (for Linux containers);
• Universal downloaded from TCP;
• Indicium downloaded from TCP.

Scenario's

The scenarios covered here can be followed separately.

1. Running Universal Independently

In this scenario you might want to serve Universal from a Docker container. The steps to accomplish this are:

1. Create a new folder universal;
2. Open the new folder universal;
3. Create a new folder app;
4. Unzip the downloaded Universal from TCP in the app folder;
5. Adjust the app/config.json with the Indicium URL (e.g.  http://localhost/indicium);

6. Create a Dockerfile in the created universal folder;

   # ./universal/
   FROM nginx:latest
   EXPOSE 80
   
   WORKDIR /app
   COPY ./app /usr/share/nginx/html
   

7. Run from the command-line, which will build the Docker image with Universal included:

   docker build ./ -t universal:latest
   

8. Run from the command-line, which will run the Docker container with the Universal image, You may want to change the port mapping based on your operating system.

   docker run -p 80:80 universal:latest
   

Now Universal will be running on http://localhost.

2. Running Indicium independently

We can also run Indicium in a Docker environment, with the following steps:

1. Create a new folder indicium;
2. Open the new folder indicium;
3. Create a new folder app;
4. Unzip the downloaded Indicium from TCP in the app folder;
5. Create a Dockerfile in the created indicium folder;

   # ./indicium/
   FROM mcr.microsoft.com/dotnet/aspnet:6.0
   ENV ASPNETCORE_URLS http://+:5000
   EXPOSE 5000
   
   WORKDIR /app
   COPY ./app /app/
   
   CMD dotnet Indicium.dll
   

6. Adjust the app/appsettings.json with the necessary database information;

7. Run from the command-line, which will build the Docker image with Indicium included:

   docker build ./ -t indicium:latest
   

8. Run from the command-line, which will run the Docker container with the Indicium image.

   docker run -p 5000:5000 indicium:latest

    

Now Indicium will be running on http://localhost:5000.

3. Running Universal and Indicium together

At last, we will cover how you can run Universal and Indicium together from separate Docker containers. This setup makes Universal available at the root and Indicium as a subfolder (/indicium), which will be reversed proxied to the actual running container.

1. Create a new folder universal;
2. Open the new folder universal;
3. Create a new folder app;
4. Unzip the downloaded Universal from TCP in the app folder;
5. Adjust the app/config.json with the Indicium URL;
6. Create a Dockerfile in the created universal folder;

   # ./universal/
   FROM nginx:latest
   EXPOSE 80
   
   WORKDIR /app
   COPY ./app /usr/share/nginx/html
   COPY ./nginx.conf /etc/nginx/nginx.conf
   
   

7. Create a nginx.conf file

   user nginx;
   worker_processes 1;
   
   error_log /var/log/nginx/error.log warn;
   pid /var/run/nginx.pid;
   
   events {
     worker_connections 1024;
   }
   
   
   http {
     include /etc/nginx/mime.types;
     default_type application/octet-stream;
   
     log_format main '$remote_addr - $remote_user [$time_local] "$request" '
     '$status $body_bytes_sent "$http_referer" '
     '"$http_user_agent" "$http_x_forwarded_for"';
   
     access_log /var/log/nginx/access.log main;
   
     sendfile on;
     keepalive_timeout 65;
     gzip  on;
   
     server {
       listen 80 default_server;
       listen [::]:80 default_server;
       server_name localhost;
   
       location / {
         root /var/www/html/universal;
         index index.html index.htm;
       }
   
       location /indicium/ {
         proxy_pass http://indicium:5000/;
         proxy_http_version 1.1;
         proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
         proxy_set_header Connection keep-alive;
         proxy_set_header Host $host;
         proxy_cache_bypass $http_upgrade;
         proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
         proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Host $host;
         proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme;
       }
     }
   
   }
   

8. Create a new folder indicium;
9. Open the new folder indicium;
10. Create a new folder app;
11. Unzip the downloaded Indicium from TCP in the app folder;
12. Create a Dockerfile in the just created app/ folder;

    # ./indicium/
    FROM mcr.microsoft.com/dotnet/aspnet:6.0
    ENV ASPNETCORE_URLS http://+:5000
    EXPOSE 5000
    
    WORKDIR /app
    COPY ./app /app/
    
    CMD dotnet Indicium.dll

13. Adjust the app/appsettings.json with the necessary database information;
14. Append the following snippet to the app/appsettings.json to setup the ReverseProxy and make it available at /indicium.

    "ReverseProxy": {
      "Enabled": true,
      "ExternalPathBase": "/indicium",
      "AllowedHeaders": [
        "XForwardedHost",
        "XForwardedProto"
      ]
    },

15. Run from the command-line to build the Universal image:

    docker build ./universal -t universal:latest
    

16. Run from the command-line to build the Indicium image:

    docker build ./indicium -t indicium:latest
    

17. Run from the command-line to run both Universal and Indicium:

    docker run --name indicium -h indicium -p 5000:5000 indicium:latest
    docker run --name universal -h universal --link indicium -p 80:80 universal:latest
    

Congrats, you'll now have Universal available at http://localhost and have Indicium available at http://localhost/indicium.

Future plans

In the future we want to make Universal and Indicium available as images via a Container Registry, so it will no longer be necessary to build them on your own. Also, we're researching multiple methods for making the SQLServer available. For allowing the databases to run in containers without compromising on ease of back-up and upgrades.