Can I alias a subcommand? (shortening the output of `docker ps`)

Question

The docker command has a ps sub-command that emits very long lines:

$ docker ps -a
CONTAINER ID        IMAGE                                


        

Answer 1

Using Docker Config

Since this is fundamentally a docker questions, not a bash question, you don't even need an alias. Docker CLI allows you to customize these commands in your own config file! From this great tip from Container 42:

1. Create or find your docker config file (if you've ever used docker login it should already be created.

   ~/.docker/config.json
   

2. Then add the default formatting for docker to use every time it runs the ps command as a top level property in the config:

   {
       "psFormat": "table {{.Image}}\t{{.Names}}\t{{.Ports}}\t{{.Status}}",
   }
   

3. Then just run docker ps like normal:

PS Format

Docker uses go templates and has a list of the valid placeholders:

| Command      | Description                                       |
| ------------ | ------------------------------------------------- |
| .ID          | Container ID                                      |
| .Image       | Image ID                                          |
| .Command     | Quoted command                                    |
| .CreatedAt   | Time when the container was created.              |
| .RunningFor  | Elapsed time since the container was started.     |
| .Ports       | Exposed ports.                                    |
| .Status      | Container status.                                 |
| .Size        | Container disk size.                              |
| .Names       | Container names.                                  |
| .Labels      | All labels assigned to the container.             |
| .Label       | Value of a specific label for this container.     |
| .Mounts      | Names of the volumes mounted in this container.   |
| .Networks    | Names of the networks attached to this container. |

Alternative Solutions / Threads

• Github Issues
  • Default "docker ps" output is too wide
  • docker ps output is so long it's unreadable
• Third Party Commands
  • ctop - Top-like interface for container metrics
  • docker-pretty-ps - beautiful, colored, long output log
  • dockerps - A better docker ps