Isn't Technology Where it's at?

Learn how Docker supports all types of development approaches and stacks.

We'll cover the following

Docker environment

Docker helps regardless of which web development approach and stack you’re using. It provides a consistent environment at build time and/or closely matches the dependencies on your production server(s).

Your Docker environment:

  1. Works without an active/fast internet connection (useful when traveling, during demonstrations, etc.).

  2. Permits experimentation without risk. No one will mind if you accidentally wipe your local MySQL database.

  3. Is free of charge and usage restrictions.

Monolithic web applications

Monolithic applications contain a mix of front-end and back-end code. Typically, the application uses a web server, server language runtime, data stores, and client-side HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and frameworks to render pages and provide APIs. WordPress is a typical example.

Docker can be used to replicate that environment so all dependencies are available on your development PC.

Serverless web applications

Serverless applications implement most functionality in the browser type with a JavaScript framework to create a Single Page Application (SPA). The core site/application is downloaded once.

Additional data and services are provided by small APIs, perhaps running as serverless functions. Despite the name, servers are still used. But you don’t need to worry about managing them. You create a function that is launched on-demand from a JavaScript Ajax request, e.g., code that emails form data to a sales team.

Docker can be used in development environments to:

  1. Run build processes such as JavaScript module bundling and Sass preprocessing.

  2. Serve the web application.

  3. Emulate infrastructures for serverless function testing.

Static sites

A static site is constructed using a build process that places content (markdown files, JSON data, database fields, etc.) into templates to create folders of static HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and media files. Those pre-rendered files can be deployed anywhere. No server-side runtime or database is required.

Static sites are often referred to as the JAMstack (JavaScript, APIs, and Markdown). All content is pre-rendered where possible, but dynamic services such as a site search can adopt server-based APIs.

Docker can be used to provide a reproducible build environment on any development PC.

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