In this post I share a new small project to realize a simple and friendly shell that enrich the classical docker shell reducing the necessary verbosity that characterizes this shell. It can happening that during the development activities you need to interact with containers, images, services performing actions like start,remove,stop and so on. Using Docker shell makes you to repeat some keywords that you would gladly avoid to save time.

Following I publish the readme of the project.

What's Dockysh

A "wrapper" shell written in Python over Docker Shell.
Dockysh try to speedup the typing of commands for Docker shell reducing the verbosity of command and in some cases providing a little of interactivity.

Disclaimer

Dockysh does not replace Docker Shell but it's based on it. Dockysh use the Python library cmd and little of Bash scripting to make easier and more user friendly some commands.

Why this shell

For people that make an intense and interactive use of Docker shell Dockysh permit you to avoid to repeat some keywords like docker container, docker images and so on. For instance instead of type docker container ls you can type

you@Dokysh$ lsc

and if you want filter the results you can type the command

you@Dokysh$ lsc your_string_filter

What you need to run this shell

To run this shell you need:

1. Bash shell
2. Docker installed
3. Python installed

For who want use this shell in Windows you can activate the Windows Subsystem for Linux

How this shell works

The shell is provided with a set of commands. Each command is just an alias to a specific Docker Shell command. Each alias command is translated and sent to Docker Shell. In case of command not mapped the shell try to run the command in Docker shell, so if you type the wrong command command_not_mapped with_args the shell try to run docker command_not_mapped with_args. As logical consequence you can run each Docker shell command without the prefix docker.

How to run the shell

Just run the following command: python dockysh.py and then type ? or help for help:you@Dokysh$ help

Examples

Following some examples of Dockysh commands.

Finding an image: you@Dokysh$ lsi alpine where alpine is a filter and return all Alpine images like shown following

you@Dokysh$ lsi alpine
REPOSITORY                                  TAG                              IMAGE ID       CREATED         SIZE
alpine                                      latest                           d4ff818577bc   6 weeks ago     6.4MB

Remove one or more images: you@Dokysh$ rmi alpine where alpine is a filter.
In this case each image corresponding the filter provided will be removed after confirmation by the user:

you@Dokysh$ rmi alpine

Found 1 images in base your filter 'alpine'. Please confirm the deletion of the images found.

Do you want eliminate the image with id "d4ff818577bc" with tag "latest" of size "6.4MB" from repository "alpine"" ?
([Y]=> yes/ [N]=>no / [E]=> exit from this operation):Y

Finding container stopped: you@Dokysh$ lsc down where down is a filter on container status

Finding container running: you@Dokysh$ lsc up where up is a filter on container status

Finding container running: you@Dokysh$ lsc b33526d46134 where b33526d46134 is a filter on image of the container.

Finding containers by image id: you@Dokysh$ lsc b33526d46134 where b33526d46134 is a filter on image of the container.

Removing a container: you@Dokysh$ rmc 192294a228b7 where 192294a228b7 is a filter representing the id of the container.

In this case each contianer corresponding the filter provided (one because we've used the id of container) will be removed after confirmation by the user:

Found 1 containers in base your filter '192294a228b7'. Please confirm the deletion of the containers found.

Do you want eliminate the container with id "192294a228b7" based on image with ID "b33526d46134" ?
([Y]=> yes/ [N]=>no / [E]=> exit from this operation): Y

Next steps

Improving the shell.

See you

AM