Dockerized Deployment - Any tips?

[Nathan-Nesbitt]

Hey all, just starting out playing around with this and I'm trying to get an understanding on how this is supposed to be deployed with docker. Opened a ticket and realized it was better suited as a conversation here as it is less of a bug, and more of a "Is this intended?".

I've been able to run this locally, but when it comes to deployment I wanted to containerize this using docker and deploy it using CI/CD.

I've read through the docs and followed the docker build process but from what I can tell this isn't intended to be built on one system then deployed in another? Rather that the docker image needs to be built with access to the DB due to the end of the NPM command here:

{
    "build:next": "cross-env PAYLOAD_CONFIG_PATH=dist/payload/payload.config.js NEXT_BUILD=true node dist/server.js",
    "build": "cross-env NODE_ENV=production yarn build:payload && yarn build:server && yarn copyfiles && yarn build:next",
}

This build:next calls the following code segment in server.js

if (process.env.NEXT_BUILD) {
    app.listen(PORT, async () => {
      payload.logger.info(`Next.js is now building...`)
      // @ts-expect-error
      await nextBuild(path.join(__dirname, '../'))
      process.exit()
    })
    return
  }

Which requires that the DB is accessible, otherwise you get an error around "mongoDB is inaccessible", which fails the installation.

I can move the .next build process outside of the code segment as follows, it builds and runs!

if (process.env.NEXT_BUILD) {
    // @ts-expect-error
    await nextBuild(path.join(__dirname, '../'))
    return
 }

The downside is that (I assume it's related) I only get blank pages on all of my payload endpoints, which I assume means something went wrong. But there are no logs! This is the only error I have:

TypeError: x.current is null
    useRef http://localhost:3000/admin/main.552283b1f89f3d6ac7c7.js:17
   ... full stack of similar errors

Any advice would be appreciated! Thanks! :)

[Nathan-Nesbitt]

Looks like this is not possible with V2, V3 now supports scalable docker design.