existdb/teipublisher repository overview

⁠Docker Image for TEI Publisher

If you do not want to install eXist yourself, you can use docker to run TEI Publisher. Docker is a tool to simplify the installation of applications and services. It creates a virtual environment including everything required for the service to run. Using our docker image, eXist will already be set up to include TEI Publisher as well as the Shakespeare and Van Gogh demo apps.

Install docker on your machine. Windows and Mac users may download the docker desktop app⁠.

To download the image run the following in a console

docker pull existdb/teipublisher:latest

once the download is complete, you can run the image with the following command:

docker run -p 8081:8080 -p 8444:8443 -v exist-data:/exist/data --name teipublisher existdb/teipublisher:latest

-p maps a port on your local machine (8081 and 8444) to the port used by eXist within the container. eXist will always run on 8080 for HTTP and 8443 for HTTPS. If those ports are already occupied by different services on your machine, choose a different port for the first number.

-v creates a named ("exist-data") volume for storing the database. If you skip this, any changes to the database will be lost if you remove the docker container, update it or create a new one. With -v the data will be stored outside the container.

If you just intend to play around a bit, you can skip the parameter.

--name assigns a name to the container, so you can reference it in other docker commands, like docker stop. We'll use the name in all commands below.

Once the container has started, you can access the eXist dashboard in your browser by navigating to

http://localhost:8081

From the dashboard you can click on the TEI Publisher, Shakespeare or Van Gogh icons to open the corresponding applications.

To stop the container run

docker stop teipublisher

To start the container again:

docker start teipublisher

Note that when you restart a container, it will run in detached mode, so you won't see any console output. You can view the output with following command though:

docker logs teipublisher

Other useful commands

docker container ps -a

Lists all running and stopped containers

docker volume ls

Displays existing volumes (where your database is stored)

docker cp teipublisher:/exist/data .

Copy the contents of the database data volume to the current directory on local disk, so you can back it up. Note that this will copy the raw database files as created by eXist (not your XML, which is binary encoded inside those files). Also make sure you run the command after stopping the active container.

docker volume rm exist-data

Remove the contents of the database data volume (in case you would like to start from scratch, deleting all changes you made).

Have a look at the docker documentation and cheatsheet for more commands.