[mongodb] How to create a DB for MongoDB container on start up?

I am working with Docker and I have a stack with PHP, MySQL, Apache and Redis. I need to add MongoDB now so I was checking the Dockerfile for the latest version and also the docker-entrypoint.sh file from the MongoDB Dockerhub but I couldn't find a way to setup a default DB, admin user/password and possibly auth method for the container from a docker-compose.yml file.

In MySQL you can setup some ENV variables as for example:

db:
    image: mysql:5.7
    env_file: .env
    environment:
      MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD: ${MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD}
      MYSQL_DATABASE: ${MYSQL_DATABASE}
      MYSQL_USER: ${MYSQL_USER}
      MYSQL_PASSWORD: ${MYSQL_PASSWORD}

And this will setup the DB and the user/password as the root password.

Is there any way to achieve the same with MongoDB? Anyone has some experience or workaround?

In case someone is looking for how to configure MongoDB with authentication using docker-compose, here is a sample configuration using environment variables:

version: "3.3"

services:

  db:
      image: mongo
      environment:
        - MONGO_INITDB_ROOT_USERNAME=admin
        - MONGO_INITDB_ROOT_PASSWORD=<YOUR_PASSWORD>
      ports:
        - "27017:27017"

When running docker-compose up your mongo instance is run automatically with auth enabled. You will have a admin database with the given password.

If you are looking to remove usernames and passwords from your docker-compose.yml you can use Docker Secrets, here is how I have approached it.

version: '3.6'

services:
  db:
    image: mongo:3
    container_name: mycontainer
  secrets:
    - MONGO_INITDB_ROOT_USERNAME
    - MONGO_INITDB_ROOT_PASSWORD
  environment:
    - MONGO_INITDB_ROOT_USERNAME_FILE=/var/run/secrets/MONGO_INITDB_ROOT_USERNAME
    - MONGO_INITDB_ROOT_PASSWORD_FILE=/var/run/secrets/MONGO_INITDB_ROOT_PASSWORD
secrets:
  MONGO_INITDB_ROOT_USERNAME:
    file:  secrets/${NODE_ENV}_mongo_root_username.txt
  MONGO_INITDB_ROOT_PASSWORD:
    file:  secrets/${NODE_ENV}_mongo_root_password.txt

I have use the file: option for my secrets however, you can also use external: and use the secrets in a swarm.

The secrets are available to any script in the container at /var/run/secrets

The Docker documentation has this to say about storing sensitive data...

https://docs.docker.com/engine/swarm/secrets/

You can use secrets to manage any sensitive data which a container needs at runtime but you don’t want to store in the image or in source control, such as:

Usernames and passwords TLS certificates and keys SSH keys Other important data such as the name of a database or internal server Generic strings or binary content (up to 500 kb in size)

Here another cleaner solution by using docker-compose and a js script.

This example assumes that both files (docker-compose.yml and mongo-init.js) lay in the same folder.

docker-compose.yml

version: '3.7'

services:
    mongodb:
        image: mongo:latest
        container_name: mongodb
        restart: always
        environment:
            MONGO_INITDB_ROOT_USERNAME: <admin-user>
            MONGO_INITDB_ROOT_PASSWORD: <admin-password>
            MONGO_INITDB_DATABASE: <database to create>
        ports:
            - 27017:27017
        volumes:
            - ./mongo-init.js:/docker-entrypoint-initdb.d/mongo-init.js:ro

mongo-init.js

db.createUser(
        {
            user: "<user for database which shall be created>",
            pwd: "<password of user>",
            roles: [
                {
                    role: "readWrite",
                    db: "<database to create>"
                }
            ]
        }
);

Then simply start the service by running the following docker-compose command

docker-compose up --build -d mongodb 

Note: The code in the docker-entrypoint-init.d folder is only executed if the database has never been initialized before.

My answer is based on the one provided by @x-yuri; but my scenario it's a little bit different. I wanted an image containing the script, not bind without needing to bind-mount it.

mongo-init.sh -- don't know whether or not is need but but I ran chmod +x mongo-init.sh also:

#!/bin/bash
# https://stackoverflow.com/a/53522699
# https://stackoverflow.com/a/37811764
mongo -- "$MONGO_INITDB_DATABASE" <<EOF
  var rootUser = '$MONGO_INITDB_ROOT_USERNAME';
  var rootPassword = '$MONGO_INITDB_ROOT_PASSWORD';
  var user = '$MONGO_INITDB_USERNAME';
  var passwd = '$MONGO_INITDB_PASSWORD';

  var admin = db.getSiblingDB('admin');

  admin.auth(rootUser, rootPassword);
  db.createUser({
    user: user,
    pwd: passwd,
    roles: [
      {
        role: "root",
        db: "admin"
      }
    ]
  });
EOF

Dockerfile:

FROM mongo:3.6

COPY mongo-init.sh /docker-entrypoint-initdb.d/mongo-init.sh

CMD [ "/docker-entrypoint-initdb.d/mongo-init.sh" ]

docker-compose.yml:

version: '3'

services:
    mongodb:
        build: .
        container_name: mongodb-test
        environment:
            - MONGO_INITDB_ROOT_USERNAME=root
            - MONGO_INITDB_ROOT_PASSWORD=example
            - MONGO_INITDB_USERNAME=myproject
            - MONGO_INITDB_PASSWORD=myproject
            - MONGO_INITDB_DATABASE=myproject

    myproject:
        image: myuser/myimage
        restart: on-failure
        container_name: myproject
        environment:
            - DB_URI=mongodb
            - DB_HOST=mongodb-test
            - DB_NAME=myproject
            - DB_USERNAME=myproject
            - DB_PASSWORD=myproject
            - DB_OPTIONS=
            - DB_PORT=27017            
        ports:
            - "80:80"

After that, I went ahead and publish this Dockefile as an image to use in other projects.

note: without adding the CMD it mongo throws: unbound variable error

Here's a working solution that creates admin-user user with a password, additional database (test-database), and test-user in that database.

Dockerfile:

FROM mongo:4.0.3

ENV MONGO_INITDB_ROOT_USERNAME admin-user
ENV MONGO_INITDB_ROOT_PASSWORD admin-password
ENV MONGO_INITDB_DATABASE admin

ADD mongo-init.js /docker-entrypoint-initdb.d/

mongo-init.js:

db.auth('admin-user', 'admin-password')

db = db.getSiblingDB('test-database')

db.createUser({
  user: 'test-user',
  pwd: 'test-password',
  roles: [
    {
      role: 'root',
      db: 'test-database',
    },
  ],
});

The tricky part was to understand that *.js files were run unauthenticated. The solution authenticates the script as the admin-user in the admin database. MONGO_INITDB_DATABASE admin is essential, otherwise the script would be executed against the test db. Check the source code of docker-entrypoint.sh.

Given this .env file:

DB_NAME=foo
DB_USER=bar
DB_PASSWORD=baz

And this mongo-init.sh file:

mongo --eval "db.auth('$MONGO_INITDB_ROOT_USERNAME', '$MONGO_INITDB_ROOT_PASSWORD'); db = db.getSiblingDB('$DB_NAME'); db.createUser({ user: '$DB_USER', pwd: '$DB_PASSWORD', roles: [{ role: 'readWrite', db: '$DB_NAME' }] });"

This docker-compose.yml will create the admin database and admin user, authenticate as the admin user, then create the real database and add the real user:

version: '3'

services:
#  app:
#    build: .
#    env_file: .env
#    environment:
#      DB_HOST: 'mongodb://mongodb'

  mongodb:
    image: mongo:4
    environment:
      MONGO_INITDB_ROOT_USERNAME: admin-user
      MONGO_INITDB_ROOT_PASSWORD: admin-password
      DB_NAME: $DB_NAME
      DB_USER: $DB_USER
      DB_PASSWORD: $DB_PASSWORD
    ports:
      - 27017:27017
    volumes:
      - db-data:/data/db
      - ./mongo-init.sh:/docker-entrypoint-initdb.d/mongo-init.sh

volumes:
  db-data:

UPD Today I avoid Docker Swarm, secrets, and configs. I'd run it with docker-compose and the .env file. As long as I don't need autoscaling. If I do, I'd probably choose k8s. And database passwords, root account or not... Do they really matter when you're running a single database in a container not connected to the outside world?.. I'd like to know what you think about it, but Stack Overflow is probably not well suited for this sort of communication.

Mongo image can be affected by MONGO_INITDB_DATABASE variable, but it won't create the database. This variable determines current database when running /docker-entrypoint-initdb.d/* scripts. Since you can't use environment variables in scripts executed by Mongo, I went with a shell script:

docker-swarm.yml:

version: '3.1'

secrets:
  mongo-root-passwd:
    file: mongo-root-passwd
  mongo-user-passwd:
    file: mongo-user-passwd

services:
  mongo:
    image: mongo:3.2
    environment:
      MONGO_INITDB_ROOT_USERNAME: $MONGO_ROOT_USER
      MONGO_INITDB_ROOT_PASSWORD_FILE: /run/secrets/mongo-root-passwd
      MONGO_INITDB_USERNAME: $MONGO_USER
      MONGO_INITDB_PASSWORD_FILE: /run/secrets/mongo-user-passwd
      MONGO_INITDB_DATABASE: $MONGO_DB
    volumes:
      - ./init-mongo.sh:/docker-entrypoint-initdb.d/init-mongo.sh
    secrets:
      - mongo-root-passwd
      - mongo-user-passwd

init-mongo.sh:

mongo -- "$MONGO_INITDB_DATABASE" <<EOF
    var rootUser = '$MONGO_INITDB_ROOT_USERNAME';
    var rootPassword = '$MONGO_INITDB_ROOT_PASSWORD';
    var admin = db.getSiblingDB('admin');
    admin.auth(rootUser, rootPassword);

    var user = '$MONGO_INITDB_USERNAME';
    var passwd = '$(cat "$MONGO_INITDB_PASSWORD_FILE")';
    db.createUser({user: user, pwd: passwd, roles: ["readWrite"]});
EOF

Alternatively, you can store init-mongo.sh in configs (docker config create) and mount it with:

configs:
    init-mongo.sh:
        external: true
...
services:
    mongo:
        ...
        configs:
            - source: init-mongo.sh
              target: /docker-entrypoint-initdb.d/init-mongo.sh

And secrets can be not stored in a file.

A couple of gists on the matter.