Question - the container.create or run API does not pull ?

[sumukhs]

Based on the documentation, I expected that container create API would pull the image. However, I get a failure exception with ImageNotFound.

Is there a way to get the CLI behavior to pull if the image doesn't exist?

Thank you!

[dan-hipschman]

Are you looking at the docker CLI documentation for docker create and assuming the Python SDK containers.create does the same thing? The Python SDK does document the ImageNotFound exception (although it's unclear from the docstring alone whether the exception is raised if the image doesn't exist at all, or just locally):

docker-py/docker/models/containers.py

Lines 846 to 858 in b37a25d

	def create(self, image, command=None, **kwargs):
	"""
	Create a container without starting it. Similar to ``docker create``.
	Takes the same arguments as :py:meth:`run`, except for ``stdout``,
	``stderr``, and ``remove``.
	Returns:
	A :py:class:`Container` object.
	Raises:
	:py:class:`docker.errors.ImageNotFound`
	If the specified image does not exist.

I agree it would be nice if they did the same thing though. That change might break existing usage that relies on the current behavior, but perhaps the maintainers would be open to it.

containers.run does pull the image if it's missing.