psql_inside_container.md

How to connect to a Postgres docker container

Following on from How to SSH into a Docker Container

I learnt how to connect to Postgres with psql while inside a Docker container.

Check which containers are running

➜ docker container ls


CONTAINER ID   IMAGE             COMMAND                  CREATED         STATUS         PORTS                    NAMES
9b1204e89d7f   postgres:latest   "docker-entrypoint.s…"   8 minutes ago   Up 8 minutes   0.0.0.0:5050->5432/tcp   postgres_de

Now we need to connect to postgres_de

➜ docker exec -it postgres_de bash

# Now we're inside the container

root@9b1204e89d7f:/#

Now it's time to run psql as we're inside the container we don't have to worry about the exposed port. The port 5050 is for use outside of the container. For example connecting to the database via Datagrip or something similar.

To get things running we need to specify a post and user like so:

root@9b1204e89d7f:/# psql -p 5432 -U postgres

And we're in!!! We can now query the database from the command line

postgres=# SELECT * FROM some_table