Redis + RabbitMQ in Docker Compose

The Complete Local Stack

This lesson brings everything together: Node.js API + Worker + PostgreSQL + Redis + RabbitMQ running with one command.

# Start everything
docker compose up -d

# Watch all logs
docker compose logs -f

# Connect to Redis CLI
docker compose exec redis redis-cli

# RabbitMQ management UI
open http://localhost:15672   # user: user / password: password

# Connect to Postgres
docker compose exec db psql -U user myapp

# Scale workers for parallel job processing
docker compose up -d --scale worker=3

Full Production-Grade docker-compose.yml

version: "3.9"
services:

  api:
    build: { context: ., dockerfile: Dockerfile }
    ports: ["3000:3000"]
    env_file: [.env]
    depends_on:
      db:       { condition: service_healthy }
      redis:    { condition: service_healthy }
      rabbitmq: { condition: service_healthy }
    restart: unless-stopped
    networks: [app]
    logging:
      driver: json-file
      options: { max-size: "10m", max-file: "3" }
    healthcheck:
      test: ["CMD", "wget", "-qO-", "http://localhost:3000/health"]
      interval: 30s; timeout: 10s; retries: 3

  worker:
    build: .
    command: node dist/workers/index.js
    env_file: [.env]
    depends_on:
      rabbitmq: { condition: service_healthy }
      redis:    { condition: service_healthy }
    restart: unless-stopped
    networks: [app]

  db:
    image: postgres:16-alpine
    environment: { POSTGRES_DB: myapp, POSTGRES_USER: user, POSTGRES_PASSWORD: password }
    volumes: [postgres:/var/lib/postgresql/data]
    healthcheck:
      test: ["CMD-SHELL", "pg_isready -U user -d myapp"]
      interval: 10s; timeout: 5s; retries: 5
    networks: [app]

  redis:
    image: redis:7-alpine
    command: redis-server --appendonly yes --maxmemory 256mb --maxmemory-policy allkeys-lru
    volumes: [redis:/data]
    healthcheck:
      test: ["CMD", "redis-cli", "ping"]
      interval: 10s; timeout: 3s; retries: 3
    networks: [app]

  rabbitmq:
    image: rabbitmq:3-management-alpine
    environment: { RABBITMQ_DEFAULT_USER: user, RABBITMQ_DEFAULT_PASS: password }
    ports: ["15672:15672"]
    volumes: [rabbitmq:/var/lib/rabbitmq]
    healthcheck:
      test: ["CMD", "rabbitmq-diagnostics", "ping"]
      interval: 15s; timeout: 10s; retries: 5
    networks: [app]

volumes:
  postgres:; redis:; rabbitmq:

networks:
  app:

Connection Strings Inside Docker Compose

# .env for local development
NODE_ENV=development
PORT=3000
DATABASE_URL=postgres://user:password@db:5432/myapp
REDIS_URL=redis://redis:6379
RABBITMQ_URL=amqp://user:password@rabbitmq:5672

# Key insight: service names are hostnames inside the Docker network
# "db", "redis", "rabbitmq" — NOT localhost

Debugging Commands

docker compose ps                          # Health status of all services
docker compose logs -f api                 # Live API logs
docker compose exec redis redis-cli KEYS "*" # Inspect Redis keys
docker compose exec rabbitmq rabbitmqctl list_queues name messages consumers
docker compose up -d --build api           # Rebuild and restart one service