How to Use the Apache httpd Docker Official Image

Deploying and spinning up a functional server is key to distributing web-based applications to users

Deploying and spinning up a functional server is key to distributing web-based applications to users. The has long made this possible. However, despite Apache Server’s popularity, users can face some hurdles with configuration and deployment. Thankfully, Apache and Docker containers can work together to streamline this process — saving you time while reducing complexity. You can package your application code and configurations together into one cross-platform unit. The Apache helps you containerize a web-server application that works across browsers, OSes, and CPU architectures. In this guide, we’ll cover Apache HTTP Server (httpd), the httpd Docker Official Image, and how to use each. You’ll also learn some quick tips and best practices. Feel free to skip our Apache intro if you’re familiar, but we hope you’ll learn something new by following along. Let’s dive in. In this tutorial: The Apache HTTP Server a “commercial-grade, featureful, and freely available source code implementation of an HTTP (Web) server.” It’s equally suitable for basic applications and robust enterprise alternatives. Like any server, Apache lets developers store and access backend resources — to ultimately serve user-facing content. HTTP web requests are central to this two-way communication. The “d” portion of the “httpd” acronym stands for “daemon.” This daemon handles and routes any incoming connection requests to the server. Developers also leverage Apache’s modularity, which lets them add authentication, caching, SSL, . This early extensibility update to Apache HTTP Server sparked its continued growth. Since Apache HTTP Server began as a series of NCSA patches, its name playfully embraces its early existence as “a patchy web server.” Some Apache HTTP Server fun facts: If you’re experienced with Apache HTTP Server and looking to containerize your application, the is a good starting point. You may also want to look at , , or depending on your use case. As a note, HTTP Server differs from — another Apache server technology. Apache HTTP Server is written in C while Tomcat is Java based. Tomcat is a Java Servlet dedicated to running Java code. It also helps developers create application pages via JavaServer Pages. We maintain the httpd Docker Official Image in tandem with the Docker community. Developers can use httpd to quickly and easily spin up a containerized Apache web server application. Out of the box, httpd contains Apache HTTP Server’s default configuration. Why use the Apache httpd Docker Official Image? Here are some core use cases: While these use cases aren’t specific to our httpd Official Image itself, it’s easy to include these external configurations within your image itself. We’ll explore this process and outline how to use your first Apache container image now. For use cases such as , a dedicated image such as is probably a better fit. Before proceeding, you’ll want to . While we’ll still use the CLI during this tutorial, the built-in Docker Dashboard gives you an easy-to-use UI for managing your images and containers. It’s easy to start, pause, remove, and inspect running containers with the click of a button. Have Desktop running and open before moving on. The quickest way to leverage the httpd Official Image is to visit , copy the command into your terminal, and run it. This downloads each package and dependency within your image before automatically adding it into Docker Desktop:     Some key things happened while we verified that httpd is working correctly in this video: This example automatically grabs the version of httpd. We recommend specifying a numbered version or a tag with greater specificity, since these versions can introduce breaking changes. It can be challenging to monitor these changes and test them effectively before moving into production. That’s a great test case, but what if you want to build something a little more customized? This is where a comes in handy. Though less common than other workflows, using a with the httpd Docker Official Image is helpful for defining custom configurations. Your is a plain text file that instructs Docker on how to build your image. While building your image manually, this file lets you — beyond what the default httpd image includes. Running an HTML server is a common workflow with the httpd Docker Official Image. You’ll want to add your in a directory which contains your project’s complete HTML. We’ll call it in this example:   The instruction tells our builder to use httpd:2.4 as our base image. The instruction copies new files or directories from our specified source, and adds them to the filesystem at a certain location. This setup is pretty bare bones, yet still lets you create a functional Apache HTTP Server image! Next, you’ll need to both and this new image to see it in action. Run the following two commands in sequence:   First, will create your image from your earlier . The command takes this image and starts a container from it. This container is running in detached mode, or in the background. If you wanted to take a step further and open a shell within that running container, you’d enter a third command: . However, that’s not necessary for this example. Finally, visit in your browser to confirm that everything is running properly. Sometimes, you don’t even need nor want a for your image builds. This is the more common approach that most developers will take — compared to using a . It also requires just a couple of commands. That said, enter the following commands to run your Apache HTTP Server container: Mac:   Linux:   Windows:   For most Linux users, the Mac version of this command works — but the Linux version is safest for those running compatible shells. While Windows users running Docker Desktop will have available, is needed for Powershell. Using

your project directory and (or its OS-specific variation) effectively expands to your current working directory, if you’re running macOS or Linux. This lets your container access your filesystem effectively and grab what it needs to run. You’re still connecting host to container — just like we did earlier within Docker Desktop — and running your Apache container in the background. Customizing your Apache HTTP Server configuration is possible with two quick steps. First, enter the following command to grab the default configuration upstream: Second, return to your and COPY in your custom configuration from the required directory: That’s it! You’ve now dropped your Apache HTTP Server configurations into place. This might include changes to any modules and any functional additions to help your server run. Apache forms connections over HTTP by default. This is fine for smaller projects, test cases, and server setups where security isn’t important. However, larger applications and especially those that transport sensitive data — like enterprise apps — may require encryption. HTTPS is the standard that all web traffic should use given its default encryption. This is possible natively through Apache using the

. In a Docker context, running web traffic over SSL means using the instruction to add your and into your directory. This is a condensed version of this process, and more steps are needed to get SSL up and running. Check out our under the “SSL/HTTPS” section for a complete list of approachable steps. Crucially, SSL uses port 443 instead of port 80 — the latter of which is normally reserved for unencrypted data). We’ve demoed how to successfully use the httpd Docker Official Image to containerize and run Apache HTTP Server. This is great for serving web pages and powering various web applications — both secure or otherwise. Using this image lets you deploy cross-platform and cross-browser without encountering hiccups. Combining Apache with Docker also preserves much of the customizability and functionality developers expect from Apache HTTP Server. To quickly start experimenting, and pull your first httpd container image. —