[postgresql] Connecting to Postgresql in a docker container from outside

I have Postgresql on a server in a docker container. How can I connect to it from the outside, that is, from my local computer? What setting should I apply to allow that?

You can also access through docker exec command by:

$ docker exec -it postgres-container bash

# su postgres

$ psql

Or

$ docker exec -it postgres-container psql -U postgres

To connect from the localhost you need to add '--net host':

docker run --name some-postgres --net host -e POSTGRES_PASSWORD=mysecretpassword -d -p 5432:5432 postgres

You can access the server directly without using exec from your localhost, by using:

psql -h localhost -p 5432 -U postgres

You can run Postgres this way (map a port):

docker run --name some-postgres -e POSTGRES_PASSWORD=mysecretpassword -d -p 5432:5432 postgres

So now you have mapped the port 5432 of your container to port 5432 of your server. -p <host_port>:<container_port> .So now your postgres is accessible from your public-server-ip:5432

To test: Run the postgres database (command above)

docker ps
CONTAINER ID        IMAGE               COMMAND                  CREATED             STATUS              PORTS                     NAMES
05b3a3471f6f        postgres            "/docker-entrypoint.s"   1 seconds ago       Up 1 seconds        0.0.0.0:5432->5432/tcp    some-postgres

Go inside your container and create a database:

docker exec -it 05b3a3471f6f bash
root@05b3a3471f6f:/# psql -U postgres
postgres-# CREATE DATABASE mytest;
postgres-# \q

Go to your localhost (where you have some tool or the psql client).

psql -h public-ip-server -p 5432 -U postgres

(password mysecretpassword)

postgres=# \l

                             List of databases
   Name    |  Owner   | Encoding |  Collate   |   Ctype    |   Access privileges
-----------+----------+----------+------------+------------+-----------------------
 mytest    | postgres | UTF8     | en_US.utf8 | en_US.utf8 |
 postgres  | postgres | UTF8     | en_US.utf8 | en_US.utf8 |
 template0 | postgres | UTF8     | en_US.utf8 | en_US.utf8 | =c/postgres   

So you're accessing the database (which is running in docker on a server) from your localhost.

In this post it's expained in detail.

In case, it is a django backend application, you can do something like this.

docker exec -it container_id python manage.py dbshell

I'm assuming that you want to be able to view data present in your container everytime you connect to it from outside. To do this, you will have to persist data on the postgres image.

If you dont have persistant data, you will have to repeat everything you did the first time.
Steps 3, 5, 6, 7, and 8 answer your question directly.

Here is the detailed overview of the entire process I followed on Windows 10 powershell (commands are the same in Linux and macOS as well):

Step 1: Start powershell in non-admin mode

Step 2: Download postgres docker image:
docker pull postgres:latest

Step 3: Start docker container in detached mode and persist data on postgres image by creating a volume and binding it to a destination
(Note: by default 5432 is the default port that is used; but state it explicitly to prevent connection errors from clients like pgadmin, dbeaver, etc.)
docker run --name postgres-test -e POSTGRES_PASSWORD=password -p 5432:5432 -v postgres-data:/var/lib/postgresql/data -d postgres:latest

Step 4: Check status of running containers
docker ps -a

Step 5: Go inside container_name in interactive mode
(Note: commands like ls, pwd, etc. can be executed here if you've checked linux containers during installation)
docker exec -it postgres-test psql -U postgres

Step 6: Create sample data. At this point, you can play with psql commands in the following manner:

# CREATE DATABASE test;
# \c test
# CREATE TABLE test_table(something int);
# INSERT INTO test_table VALUES (123);
# SELECT * FROM test_table;
# \q

Step 7: Open a database client application like pgadmin or dbeaver and enter the below in the connection fields:

Host: localhost
Database: test
User: postgres
Password: password

Step 8: Enter the query select * from test_table in the query editor and you should be able to see the output 123

There are good answers here but If you like to have some interface for postgres database management, you can install pgAdmin on your local computer and connect to the remote machine using its IP and the postgres exposed port (by default 5432).

I know this is late, if you used docker-compose like @Martin

These are the snippets that helped me connect to psql inside the container

docker-compose run db bash

root@de96f9358b70:/# psql -h db -U root -d postgres_db

I cannot comment because I don't have 50 reputation. So hope this helps.

I am using django with postgres in Docker containers. in the docker-compose file, add the following:

db:
    image: postgres:10-alpine
    environment:
        - POSTGRES_DB=app
        - POSTGRES_USER=postgres
        - POSTGRES_PASSWORD=supersecretpassword
    **ports:
        - "6543:5432"**

which will add accessible port by your local machine. for myself, I connected DBeaver to it. this will prevent port clashes between your app request and local machine request. at first, I got a message saying that the port 5432 is in use (which is by django app) so I couldn't access by pgAdmin or DBeaver.

I tried to connect from localhost (mac) to a postgres container. I changed the port in the docker-compose file from 5432 to 3306 and started the container. No idea why I did it :|

Then I tried to connect to postgres via PSequel and adminer and the connection could not be established.

After switching back to port 5432 all works fine.

  db:
    image: postgres
    ports:
      - 5432:5432
    restart: always
    volumes:
      - "db_sql:/var/lib/mysql"
    environment:
      POSTGRES_USER: root
      POSTGRES_PASSWORD: password
      POSTGRES_DB: postgres_db

This was my experience I wanted to share. Perhaps someone can make use of it.

This one worked for me:

PGPASSWORD=postgres psql -h localhost -p 3307 -U postgres -d postgres

Use the above to load an initial script as:

PGPASSWORD=postgres psql -h localhost -p 3307 -U postgres -d postgres < src/sql/local/blabla.sql

Do not that i remap my ports as:

docker run -p3307:5432 --name postgres -e POSTGRES_PASSWORD=postgres -d postgres

I already had running postgres on host machine and didn't want to allow connections from network, so I did run temporary postgres instance in container and created database in just two lines:

# Run PostgreSQL
docker run --name postgres-container -e POSTGRES_PASSWORD=password -it -p 5433:5432 postgres

# Create database
docker exec -it postgres-container createdb -U postgres my-db

first open the docker image for the postgres

docker exec -it <container_name>

then u will get the root --root@868594e88b53:/# it need the database connection

psql postgresql://<username>:<databasepassword>@postgres:5432/<database>

For some reason 5432 port seems protected. I changed my port config from 5432:5432to 5416:5432 and the following command worked to connect to your postgres database from outside its docker container:

psql -h localhost -p 5416 -U <my-user> -d <my-database>

docker ps -a to get container ids then docker exec -it psql -U -W

I managed to get it run on linux

1. run the docker postgres - make sure the port is published, I use alpine because it's lightweight.

   docker run --rm -P -p 127.0.0.1:5432:5432 -e POSTGRES_PASSWORD="1234" --name pg postgres:alpine
   

2. using another terminal, access the database from the host using the postgres uri

   psql postgresql://postgres:1234@localhost:5432/postgres
   

for mac users, replace psql with pgcli