Compose: Ability to override folder-based container name prefix

[intellix]

As a developer, I have a million different projects and now they're all using docker with compose. I have a project structure like:

/flatscanner
    /www
        index.html
    /api
        index.php
    /docker
        docker-compose.yml


/konoro
    /www
        index.html
    /api
        index.php
    /docker
        docker-compose.yml

To bring up all the services for a service, I go to it's docker directory and up -d, but the prefix is based on the folder, so is always docker_ and I'm getting conflicts as they use similar services: nginx, mysql, redis etc.

In order to keep them unique, I need to create another folder inside /docker with the project name so the containers are prefixed with the project name instead:

/flatscanner
    /www
    /api
    /docker
        /flatscanner
            docker-compose.yml


/konoro
    /www
    /api
    /docker
        /konoro
            docker-compose.yml

I feel like the folder prefix should be configurable, so I can have a YML file like:

version: '2',
prefix: 'flatscanner'
services:
    nginx
        image: 'nginx'

Then I'll have containers like: flatscanner_nginx_1 and konoro_nginx_1 instead a conflicting service called docker_nginx_1

[clkao]

you can use -p or the COMPOSE_PROJECT_NAME environment variable for that.

[dnephin]

Yes, you should use the project name.

Duplicate of #745

[mikebranderhorst]

Or define it in your .env file in the docker folder
MY_PROJECT_NAME=flatscanner

/flatscanner
    /www
        index.html
    /api
        index.php
    /docker
        .env
        docker-compose.yml

/konoro
    /www
        index.html
    /api
        index.php
    /docker
        .env
        docker-compose.yml

[hammady]

There is another use case where the project name environment variable suggested above is not enough.
Suppose you have 2 compose files under the same folder, one for dev and another for test.
It is common to run dev and test at the same time, and with the environment variable solution set in .env, they will still have the same prefix. Always specifying -p or an inline environment variable is not so convenient. I believe a prefix option is best suited in this case.

[abdennour]

What about having names without the same prefix ? We want to customize container/images names separately of a common prefix.

[ciekawy]

well you can always use name to provide explicit name without prefix (but also without suffix id so it cannot be use for services ;)

[S93rastogi]

Docker Prepends the current folder name with all the components name created using docker compose file.

Eg : If the current folder name containing the docker-compose.yml file is test, all the volumes,network and container names will get test appended to it. In order to solve the problem people earlier proposed the idea of using -p flag with docker-compose command but the solution is not the most feasible one as a project name is required just after the -p attribute. The project name then gets appended to all the components created using docker compose file.

The Solution to the above problem is using the name property as in below.

volumes: 
  data:
    driver: local
    name: mongodata

networks: 
  internal-network:
    driver: bridge
    name: frontend-network

This volume can be referred in the service section as

services:
  mongo-database:
      volumes: 
        - data:/data/db
      networks: 
        - internal-network

The above name attribute will prevent docker-compose to prepend folder name.

Note : For the container name one could use the property container_name

services:
  mongo-database:
    container_name: mongo

[ismailcaakir]

you can use -p or the COMPOSE_PROJECT_NAME environment variable for that.

thanks for answer.