How to write data to host file system from Docker container

Question

I have a Docker container which is running some code and creating some HTML reports. I want these reports to be published into a specific directory on the host machine, i.e.

Answer 1

I am using Docker toolbox on windows. I am Working on a Spring Boot Application using Docker. My application writes logs to

users/path/service.log 

So when i started my application from host terminal the Log file was successfully updated. But the same when i did on docker no file was created and neither updated.

So i changed my log file location to match with the Container's Directories

var/log/service.log

I started my container again and my file was updated again.

You can choose any location as long as it matches with the container Directory. Just bash into the container and see what suits you.

Next step is to copy log files from container to host.

So in order to copy those logs to your host. You can use one of two ways i know of-

1- use Volumes in docker

2- use following Docker command to copy file from docker container to host-:

docker cp <containerId>:/file/path/within/container /host/path/target

Answer 2

From "Managing data in containers", mounting a host folder to a container would be:

docker run -v /Users/<path>:/<container path>

(see "Use volume")

Using only -v /usr/share/nginx/reports would declare the internal container path /usr/share/nginx/reports as a volume, but would have nothing to do with the host folder.

This is one of the type of mounts available: