How can I connect Odoo not running on Docker to a Postgres container running on Docker?

Question

I am trying to connect Odoo to a Postgres database instance which is running in Docker, but having trouble figuring out how to connect them. I created my instance like so:

$ docker run -d -e POSTGRES_USER=odoo -e POSTGRES_PASSWORD=odoo -e POSTGRES_DB=postgres --name mydb postgres:10

Only Postgres is running in Docker, not Odoo. How would I connect the Postgres running inside Docker to the outside Odoo?

Answer 1

Shortly:
You have to open the port of your docker instance
-p 5432:5432

Example:

docker run -d -p 5432:5432 -e POSTGRES_USER=odoo -e POSTGRES_PASSWORD=odoo -e POSTGRES_DB=postgres --name mydb postgres:10

---

Description

Because when you run a container with docker, it is not exposed by default to the host network. So when you run Postgres, it is not accessible outside of the container. In order to make it accessible, you could :

• Export a specific port : docker run -d -p 5432:5432 ...
• Use the host network: docker run --network=host ...

Bonus:

If you wish to run odoo within a container in the future, you might need to create a docker network docker network create odooNetwork and use it for your Postgres and Odoo instances :
docker run -d --network=odooNetwork ...

More details about docker network in the documentation