Docker Spaces

Spaces accommodate custom Docker containers for apps that go outside the scope of Streamlit and Gradio. Docker Spaces give freedom to users to go beyond the limits of what was previously possible with the standard sdks. From FastAPI and Go endpoints to Phoenix apps and ML Ops tools, Docker Spaces can help in many different setups.

Setting up Docker Spaces

Selecting Docker as the SDK when creating a new Space will initialize your Space by setting the sdk property to docker in your README.md file’s YAML block. Alternatively, given an existing Space repository, set sdk: docker inside the YAML block at the top of your Spaces README.md file. You can also change the default exposed port 7860 by setting app_port: 7860. Afterwards, you can create a usual Dockerfile.

---
title: Basic Docker SDK Space
emoji: 🐳
colorFrom: purple
colorTo: gray
sdk: docker
app_port: 7860
---

Secret Management

In Docker Spaces, the secrets management is different for security reasons. Once you create a secret in the Settings tab, you can expose the secret by adding the following line in your Dockerfile.

RUN --mount=type=secret,id=EXAMPLE,required=true cat /run/secrets/EXAMPLE > /example

Where EXAMPLE is the name of the secret. Afterwards, you can access the secret as an environment variable. For example, in Python you would do os.environ.get("EXAMPLE"). Check out this example of a Docker Space that uses secrets.

Permissions

The container runs with user ID 1000. If you face permission issues, you might need to use chmod in your Dockerfile to grant the right permissions. For example, if you want to use the directory /data, you can do:

RUN mkdir -p /data
RUN chmod 777 /data

Alternatively, you can create a user and set the WORKDIR to the user’s home directory. This way, you can avoid user permission issues.

# Set up a new user named "user" with user ID 1000
RUN useradd -m -u 1000 user

# Switch to the "user" user
USER user

# Set home to the user's home directory
ENV HOME=/home/user \
	PATH=/home/user/.local/bin:$PATH

# Set the working directory to the user's home directory
WORKDIR $HOME/app

# Copy the current directory contents into the container at $HOME/app setting the owner to the user
COPY --chown=user . $HOME/app

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