Dapr .NET SDK Development with Docker-Compose

Learn about local development with Docker-Compose

Docker-Compose

Consider this to be a .NET companion to the Dapr Self-Hosted with Docker Guide.

docker-compose is a CLI tool included with Docker Desktop that you can use to run multiple containers at a time. It is a way to automate the lifecycle of multiple containers together, and offers a development experience similar to a production environment for applications targeting Kubernetes.

  • Pro: Since docker-compose manages containers for you, you can make dependencies part of the application definition and stop the long-running containers on your machine.
  • Con: most investment required, services need to be containerized to get started.
  • Con: can be difficult to debug and troubleshoot if you are unfamilar with Docker.

Using docker-compose

From the .NET perspective, there is no specialized guidance needed for docker-compose with Dapr. docker-compose runs containers, and once your service is in a container, configuring it similar to any other programming technology.

💡 App Port

In a container, an ASP.NET Core app will listen on port 80 by default. Remember this for when you need to configure the --app-port later.

To summarize the approach:

  • Create a Dockerfile for each service
  • Create a docker-compose.yaml and place check it in to the source code repository

To understand the authoring the docker-compose.yaml you should start with the Hello, docker-compose sample.

Similar to running locally with dapr run for each service you need to choose a unique app-id. Choosing the container name as the app-id will make this simple to remember.

The compose file will contain at a minimum:

  • A network that the containers use to communicate
  • Each service’s container
  • A <service>-daprd sidecar container with the service’s port and app-id specified
  • Additional dependencies that run in containers (redis for example)
  • optional: Dapr placement container (for actors)

You can also view a larger example from the eShopOnContainers sample application.