Dockerize your own Game of Thrones' API

This article will demonstrate a fun and useful use case of docker, where we will create and deploy to production a custom-made API. In our case, it will provide information about the episodes of the TV show “Game of Thrones”. Besides Docker, our stack will include:

Tool	Description	Purpose
Flask	Python	microframework
MongoDB	NoSQL database	Store the API data
Digital Ocean	Cloud provider	Host the server where the API will be deployed to
Terraform	IaC (Infrastructure as code) tool	Create and manage the cloud server
Docker Compose V2 Plugin	Define an run multiple containers	Instantiate and connect our containers
Postman	API platform	Create and publish the API

About the API

The API will serve information about episodes and comments about them. There are endpoints for posting, deleting and editing those comments as well. The documentation can be accessed here. Also, its raw .json version is in the repository, just in case the link is no longer up.

About Terraform

This is an optional part for the project, but it is highly recommended as it demonstrates how easily we can automate the process of creating and managing cloud services. Here, we used it to create a server accordingly to our specification (Ubuntu 20.04, 1 CPU, 25 GB Disk), besides that, a SSH key was added to the server, so we can access it without being prompted for passwords. Learn more about SSH here.

About Docker Compose V2 plugin

Instead of the well-known “docker-compose”, we will use its new version, which now is accessible by the command “docker compose” (space instead of dash). This new tool is built in Golang, so it is faster than the former (built in Python). It also includes new features, such as the “profiles” attribute, that can be used to create groups of containers we wish to run from the docker-compose.yml file. Learn more about Docker Compose V2 here.

Sequence diagram

This sequence diagram illustrates the steps that will be taken in the whole process of deploying our API.

In short, Terraform will create the new server on Digital Ocean, then, from the new server, we will clone the API repository from GitHub and start the containers with “docker compose”. By doing so, the API will be available on the internet, via the server’s public address on port 5000 (used by the Flask project).

Video demonstration

This project was presented at Docker Community All-hands, on Dec 09, 2021. Check the video here

Considerations

The remote server was accessed by using root, which is the default user set when the new server instance was created. Having root remote accessing a server is not considered a good practice, The alternative is to create a new user for that purpose and disable root access on the server (the SSH article referenced above demonstrates how to to so).
Regarding the API access, if you wish to use a similar project for professional/commercial usages, it is recommended to implement some mechanism to limit/control the API requests. There are several options out there for this purpose.