# My Fellowship Journey: Bett Kipchumba

**URL:** <https://talk.openmrs.org/t/my-fellowship-journey-bett-kipchumba/36880>\
**Category:** Uncategorized\
**Created:** [June 13, 2022, 8:00pm UTC](https://talk.openmrs.org/t/my-fellowship-journey-bett-kipchumba/36880 "2022-06-13T20:00:19Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 7

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![corneliouzbett](https://talk.openmrs.org/user_avatar/talk.openmrs.org/corneliouzbett/32/15464_2.png) [@corneliouzbett](https://talk.openmrs.org/u/corneliouzbett)\
**Post date:** [October 27, 2022, 9:09am UTC](https://talk.openmrs.org/t/my-fellowship-journey-bett-kipchumba/36880/7 "2022-10-27T09:09:01Z")

</div>

For the recent weeks, I’ve been looking into docker and containerization technology. As a concept it refers to the process of packaging up everything needed to run an application, including runtime dependencies, configuration files, and settings then running the application in a pre-prepared isolated environment.

Docker is a containerization technology that enables for the rapid and easy creation of containers. It runs on Windows, Linux, and MacOS. It is used in both development and production. The intention is harness this technology to better our backend development experience. For my case module development.

**Docker support for OpenMRS module development**

> Note: This is still a work in progress. Feedback is highly appreciated

**Pre-requisites**

- Docker - (No maven installation needed)

OpenMRS releases two variants of [`openmrs-core`](https://hub.docker.com/r/openmrs/openmrs-core/tags) docker images: `nightly` and `dev`. I’m going to focus on the `dev` image, which is used for development. It contains dev dependencies such as maven and a configured OpenMRS SDK necessary for development purposes only.

Below is a `docker-compose.yml` template file;

```auto
version: "3.8"

services:
  db:
    image: mariadb:10.3
    command: "mysqld --character-set-server=utf8 --collation-server=utf8_general_ci"
    environment:
      MYSQL_DATABASE: ${OPENMRS_DB_NAME:-openmrs}
      MYSQL_USER: ${OPENMRS_DB_USER:-openmrs}
      MYSQL_PASSWORD: ${OPENMRS_DB_PASSWORD:-openmrs}
      MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD: ${OPENMRS_DB_ROOT_PASSWORD:-openmrs}
    deploy:
      replicas: '${OPENMRS_DB_REPLICAS:-1}'
      restart_policy:
        max_attempts: 3
    volumes:
      - db-data:/var/lib/mysql

  openmrs-core:
    image: openmrs-core:dev
    ports:
      - "8080:8080"
      - "8000:8000"
    restart: "no"
    environment:
      OMRS_CONFIG_MODULE_WEB_ADMIN: "true"
      OMRS_CONFIG_AUTO_UPDATE_DATABASE: "true"
      OMRS_CONFIG_CREATE_TABLES: "true"
      OMRS_CONFIG_CONNECTION_SERVER: ${OPENMRS_DB_SERVER:-db}
      OMRS_CONFIG_CONNECTION_DATABASE: ${OPENMRS_DB_NAME:-openmrs}
      OMRS_CONFIG_CONNECTION_USERNAME: ${OPENMRS_DB_USER:-openmrs}
      OMRS_CONFIG_CONNECTION_PASSWORD: ${OPENMRS_DB_PASSWORD:-openmrs}
      OMRS_REFRESH_MODULES: ${OMRS_REFRESH_MODULES:-false}
    healthcheck:
      test: ["CMD", "curl", "-f", "http://localhost:8080/openmrs"]
      timeout: 5s
    volumes:
      - ${PWD}:/openmrs/module/source
      # mount local m2 repository
      - ~/.m2:/root/.m2
volumes:
  db-data:

```

With changes from this [PR](https://github.com/openmrs/openmrs-core/pull/4169)(will be available in the next release of `dev` image), you only a compose file at the root of your module repository to start developing using docker. Moreover, extra configuration file is needed for a module that depend on other modules in order to run/start e.g `queue module` or `emrapi module`. That file would be `module.properties`(same as disto.properties used by SDK) - specifies the required modules to be download and looks like;

```auto
version=0.0.1-DEV
war.openmrs=2.6.0-SNAPSHOT
name=Queue module development
omod.webservices.rest=2.36.0

```

This leverages the OpenMRS-SDK to download modules specified in the properties. However, we need to modify OpenMRS-SDK to make `name`, `version`, `war.openmrs` optional or add a flag or something along those lines…

I would advise to mount local `m2` repo for faster builds.

Any additional module to `module.properties` or force re-download modules needs a restart and first please set `OMRS_REFRESH_MODULES` to `true`

**Build**

Build module sources using the `openmrs-dev` docker image.

```auto
docker run --rm -w="/module" -v ~/.m2:/root/.m2 -v ${PWD}:/module openmrs/openmrs-core:dev mvn clean install -DskipTests

```

**Module development**

To start the OpenMRS development server, execute the command;

```bash
docker-compose up -d

```

Restart the container to deploy changes;

```auto
docker-compose restart

```

Under the hood `docker-compose restart` will build the current module, re-deploy and restart the OpenMRS development server

Access the container/server logs;

```auto
docker-compose logs -f --tail=1000

```

**Connecting to an existing database**

To use an existing database, first set the `OPENMRS_DB_REPLICAS` env variable to `0`, then provide the following database connection properties in the `.env` file:

```bash
OPENMRS_DB_SERVER=host.docker.internal // The database host
OPENMRS_DB_NAME=openmrs
OPENMRS_DB_USER=openmrs
OPENMRS_DB_PASSWORD=openmrs

```

Thoughts? Improvements?

[@Platform\_Team](https://talk.openmrs.org/groups/platform_team) [@dev5](https://talk.openmrs.org/groups/dev5) [@dev4](https://talk.openmrs.org/groups/dev4)[@dev3](https://talk.openmrs.org/groups/dev3) [@dev2](https://talk.openmrs.org/groups/dev2) [@dev1](https://talk.openmrs.org/groups/dev1)

Would you be interested to try out? Let me know 🙂

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_[View the full topic](https://talk.openmrs.org/t/my-fellowship-journey-bett-kipchumba/36880)._