In this post I am going to propose a set up to run any kind of application on a developer laptop in complete isolation. It is based on packaging the application into a Docker container, and convince it is still talking to the real world while we’re actually mocking everything around it (spoiler: using more Docker containers).
I have used this in projects of various sizes – from small scale to really chunky applications with lots of intricate dependencies – and has generally proven itself to be worth the initial investment.
In this guide I will assume that the reader is starting from scratch, with an application that is run locally just from their IDE, with no real automation or containerisation. Feel free to skip any of the steps if they are redundant or do not apply to your situation.
I will also assume the reader is familiar with basic concepts of Docker and networking.
