Connecting to Postgres running in a Docker container using psql

Question

I'm trying to run a local Postgres database with the PostGIS extension, and then populate the database with a shapefile, without having to load the data in manually.

I have a docker-compose.yml where I'm first using the postgis docker image and using port 5432. I've already tested this when the container is running and I can successfully connect.

The second part, import-shapefile uses the postgres image and installs the needed extensions, converts the shapefile and should add the results into the db running in the postgis container.

docker-compose.yml:

services:
  postgis:
    image: postgis/postgis
    restart: always
    env_file:
      - .env
    ports:
      - 5432:5432
    platform: linux/amd64
    volumes:
      - ./dataset:/dataset

  import-shapefile:
    image: postgres
    depends_on:
      - postgis
    volumes:
      - ./dataset:/dataset
    entrypoint: sh
    command: -c "apt-get update && apt-get install -y postgis && shp2pgsql -s 4326 -I -D -W UTF-8 dataset/my_shapefile.shp my_table | psql -U username -d my_db"
    environment:
      - POSTGRES_USER
      - POSTGRES_DB

When looking at the container logs I see the error in the import-shapefile container:

sql: error: connection to server on socket "/var/run/postgresql/.s.PGSQL.5432" failed: No such file or directory
Is the server running locally and accepting connections on that socket?

Does anyone know how to resolve this within the docker-compose.yml file?

Answer 1

your postgis host is the name of the postgis service, hence postgis

you need to add it as environment variable to your second container or use psql client inside the container such as:

psql -h $POSTGRES_HOST -d $POSTGRES_DB -U $POSTGRES_USER