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Connect to Docker database with an external tool
Docker is pretty awesome, and when creating a database instance with Docker, we can log in through the terminal command.
However, I'm one for graphic Database tools, so today I'll guide you through how to connect to a Docker database.
For this example, I'm going to use a MariaDB instance. The purpose of today is to show you how to connect with it.
Create a new
docker-compose.yml
file. This is the configuration file for Docker.version: '3.7'
services:
db:
image: mariadb
restart: unless-stopped
volumes:
- db_data:/var/lib/mysql
ports:
- 3307:3306
environment:
MYSQL_DATABASE: my_db
MYSQL_USER: root
MYSQL_PASSWORD: root
MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD: root
volumes: db_data:
Above, we create a simple MariaDB image. I map the volume to a local folder (db_data).
Furthermore, we set the environment to have some log-in possibility and a default database.
Furthermore, we set the environment to have some log-in possibility and a default database.
But the critical part for connecting is the ports!
The first number is the port we can connect to. We mustn't use
The first number is the port we can connect to. We mustn't use
3306
for this since this is our default system database.I choose to use
You can, however, change this to anything that's not in use.
3307
as it's close to what we know.You can, however, change this to anything that's not in use.
Now when we run
docker-compose up
, we spool up this database.
Alright, let's see how we can now connect to this, I'm using TablePlus, but the concept is the same for any tool.
We start by creating a new connection.

The main parts here are:
host
: 0.0.0.0 as this will be the default docker hostport
: 3307 as we described aboveuser
: the user you set in the environmentpassword
: the password set in the environmentNow you should be able to test and connect with the Docker database!
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