Sharing Volumes Between Docker Containers

In docker, it's easy to share data between containers with the --volumes-from flag.

First let's create a Dockerfile that declares a volume.

from apline:latest

volume ["/foo"]

Then let's:

1. Build it into an image foo-image
2. Create & Run it as a container with the name foo-container
3. Put some text into a file in the volume

docker build . -t foo-image
docker run -it --name foo-container foo-image sh -c 'echo abc > /foo/test.txt'

When you run docker volume ls you can see a volume is listed. By running a container from an image with a volume we've created a volume.

When you run docker container ls -a you can see that we've also created a container. It's stopped currently, but the volume is still available.

Now let's run another container passing the name of our previously created container to the --volumes-from flag.

docker run -it --volumes-from foo-container alpine cat /foo/test.txt

# outputs: abc

We've accessed the volume of the container and output the results.

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