Goal

Dockerize NextJS application

Problem

Docker compose up yields in the following error: Couldn't find a pages directory. Please create one under the project root.

Application

Files & folders

docker-compose.yml
web
   .next
   pages
   public
   .dockerignore
   dockerfile
   [more nextjs files & folders here]

docker-compose

version: '3'

services:
  web:
    build:
      context: web
      dockerfile: dockerfile
    ports:
      - "3000:3000"
    container_name: rughood_web

dockerfile

FROM node:16

WORKDIR /web

COPY package*.json .

RUN npm install

COPY . .

EXPOSE 3000

CMD ["npm", "run", "dev"]

.dockerignore

Dockerfile
.dockerignore
node_modules
npm-debug.log
README.md
.git

Note!

The NextJS application itself is working fine when I run npm run dev within the web directory (which invokes the script "dev": "next dev" in package.json). I only have the error when trying to dockerize it. Moreover, in the docker-compose I also initiate a Redis cache, which is working fine too. Therefore I conclude the error must be how I try to combine Docker and NextJS. Thank you very much in advance :)

Update 1

How I got there
Using the tips from @HansKilian and Exploring Docker container's file system I did the following:

1. Cd to the web directory
   
2. Built an image from the dockerfile docker build .
3. Explored the image with the following command docker run --rm -it --entrypoint=/bin/bash name-of-image
   
4. Once inside, execute ls or ls -lsa
   This gave me the following results:

What's in the derived image

dockerfile
next-env.d.ts
next.config.js
node_modules
package-lock.json
package.json
pages
public
tsconfig.json
[Among other files/folders]

So the pages folder actually seems to be in the root of the container, yet still I get the error (pages is a directory in the container in which I can cd and -ls)

P.s. don't forget to delete your image if you're not going to using it anymore

Update 2

Building the image and running it from within the web directory actually works, so it might actually have something to do with the docker-compose?

CodePudding user response：

Here is my working Dockerfile with nextjs:

FROM node:16.14.0

RUN npm install -g [email protected]

RUN mkdir -p /app

WORKDIR /app

COPY package*.json /app

RUN npm i

COPY . /app

EXPOSE 3000

RUN npm run build

CMD ["npm", "run", "dev"]

And docker-compose.yml :

version: "3.7"

services:
  project-name:
    image: project-name
    build:
      context: .
      dockerfile: Dockerfile
    container_name: project-name
    restart: always
    volumes:
      - ./:/app
      - /app/node_modules
      - /app/.next
    ports:
      - "3000:3000"

CodePudding user response：

While I was trying every single line of code ever uploaded to the internet, I came back to my initial set-up (from the question) and suddenly it now does work. Source control confirming I didn't change a thing.

To be sure, I deleted all containers, images and volumes from Docker and ran docker compose up. Yet still it worked. Tried many things to recreated the error, but I couldn't. Thank you all for helping and hopefully this may be come to use for someone else!