Not able to connect to database when running in dockers

[affien70]

Hi,
I'm strugling a bit to connect the back end to the database when running in dockers.
I have created 3 docker containers. witsmlexplorer-db, witsmlexplorer-frontend-dev and witsmlexplorer-api-dev.
I'm able to reach the front end gui but I can't save servers or read from DB.

But when I stopped the witsmlexplorer-api-dev container and started it localy using "dotnet" everything worked as it should. I was able to connect to Sitecom, save the server in DB and browse the WITSML.
So I guess i must have missconfigured something in my docker container?

The first error message I get when reloading the front end is the following:

witsmlexplorer-api-dev       | [09:05:37 FTL] Something went wrong: System.InvalidOperationException: Unable to resolve service for type 'WitsmlExplorer.Api.Repositories.IDocumentRepository`2[WitsmlExplorer.Api.Models.Server,System.Guid]' while attempting to
 activate 'WitsmlExplorer.Api.Services.CredentialsService'.

I'm running all on my laptop, with Windows 11, .net 7.0 and Docker Desktop.
I would be glad to receive any hints on what I need to check to get this up and running in docker. It seems like the front end is talking to the back end, but there it stops.

Thanks.

Alf Ove Røyland
Wells Data Management Advisor
ConocoPhillips

[steinsiv]

Hi thanks for reaching out!

From the description it sounds to me like the API container lacks connection with the running MongoDb instance.

If you are running something similar to the file docker-compose.yml under Docker/Local folder, it will only raise two containers with a shared network. If you then have MongoDb running separately as a container on the host with ports exposed, you need to use the host.docker.internal hostname for the API to be able to talk to the MongoDb instance on the host. Something like below for the config.json file. (spec here: config.json)

"MongoDb": {
    "Name": "witsml-explorer-db",
    "ConnectionString": "mongodb://user:[email protected]"

In the second type of setup where you can run all three containers in the same network (and all three are defined as services in the same docker-compose.yml file) you will have to use the defined name in the dockerfile (like api and web are defined) instead of host.docker internal. Something like below (depending on service name for mongodb used in docker-compose)

"MongoDb": {
    "Name": "witsml-explorer-db",
    "ConnectionString": "mongodb://user:password@mongodb"

I hope this was helpful, but if the issue was not about connectivity and lies elsewhere, we can try to help locate the issue just let us know. We will then need your docker-compose setup and/or config.json without credentials so that we could try to replicate the error and find a solution.

[janburak]

Yes the standard allocation is .\config.json\config.json, and then this directory is mounted in the api container. I have tried your suggestion as well but no success unfortunately.

What message did you get when you mounted the config.json file instead of the config.json directory?

[affien70]

Good news!
It worked well on my Mac.... :-)
Strange things...

[steinsiv]

Yes the standard allocation is .\config.json\config.json, and then this directory is mounted in the api container. I have tried your suggestion as well but no success unfortunately.

I have also tried to change the docker build file to copy config.json into /app in the docker container but it doesn't show up there... It seems like it's copying when building

COPY config.json/ app/

Yes if you are copying it in during docker build, this one should actually be the file config.json and not a folder

COPY config.json app/

But you might then get a collision with the mapping in docker-compose.yml, so if you choose to copying it in during build you should probably also remove the volume from the docker-compose.yml:

    volumes:
      - ./config.json:/app/config.json:ro
      - ./ca-bundle.crt:/etc/ssl/certs/ca-bundle.crt:ro

removing - ./config.json:/app/config.json:ro

[steinsiv]

Great :) Yet another thing you can try to get it to work on Windows is to use full paths in the docker-compose.yml file instead of relative paths. Something like:

volumes:
      - C:/Folder_where_everything_is/config.json:/app/config.json:ro
      - C:/Folder_where_everything_is/ca-bundle.crt:/etc/ssl/certs/ca-bundle.crt:ro

I have not tried this myself on Windows though, but had an issue with wrong formatting earlier on the path.

[affien70]

Will do :-)
Thank you both for reaching out!