Create 

Click the Create Container button to enter the form for creating a new container object. This does not create a Docker container yet but only gathers information. The actual Docker container is created when starting the container.

Fill in at least the mandatory fields, marked with a star (*). Some of them are pre-filled with a reasonable default value. Change only if required. Others like Title, Repository, Tag and Container Port have to be set by the user. Below is a detailed description of each form field. In the example screenshots, we set up a Shiny app.

Fill in a reasonable title that helps you identify the container. The title must be unique. A description is helpful, but not required.

Fill in the repository, tag and container port.

After filling the form, click the Create button to create the container object. This does not create the actual Docker container yet.

Container templates 

It is often the case that the same type of container will be used multiple times across the site. To save some time and reduce the chances of mistakes, Kiosc provides container templates. To make use of them, select a template from the top-hand dropdown menu and click Get. This will populate all form fields that are set in the template with you create form. Anything you already entered will be overwritten. The prefix [Site-wide] or [Project-wide] indicates whether this template is either a site-wide or a project-wide template. By default, one template for an example Shiny app is available (it does not contain any meaningful data and is just meant as a toy example). Admins can then create additional site-wide templates.

Registry user and Registry password 

If the Docker image is hosted in a private container registry, you can specify the user and password credentials in the form. For example, if the image is in a GitLab container registry, you will first need to generate an access token first, and then use it as the Registry password field. In general, images can be downloaded from private registry only after running the docker login command. The fields Registry user and Registry password mirror the credentials that you have to ender with docker login. Note that after creating the container the credentials will not be visible anymore, but they will be replaced everywhere by a <masked> token.

Environment 

Environment variables can be specified using a JSON dictionary. Top-level keys in the dictionary become the environmental variables visible to the app launched in the container:

{
    "ID": "My container",
    "LIST": [ "A", "B", "C" ]
}

Given the above example, two environment variables will be defined: ID and LIST. The contents of ID will be My container; the contents of LIST will be [ 'A', 'B', 'C' ]. Note that the double quotes will be changed to single quotes.

These variables are available to the web app of the container, and can be used to specify e.g. a data source or other parameters for the container web app.

In addition to the user defined variables, the title, description and container_port are also exposed as environment variables to the Docker container (as TITLE, DESCRIPTION and CONTAINER_PORT respectively). The complete list looks like this:

{
    "ID": "My container",
    "LIST": [ "A", "B", "C" ],
    "TITLE": "Some title",
    "DESCRIPTION": "Some description",
    "CONTAINER_PORT": 8080,
}

Environment secret keys 

Environment secret keys is a comma-separated list of sensitive keys to environment variables that have to have a corresponding key defined in the JSON dictionary in the environment field. Those variables will be masked when editing them or viewing the details of the container.

Create 

Container templates 

Registry user and Registry password 

Environment 

Environment secret keys 

Container path 

Timeout 

Heartbeat URL (inactive)

Files 

Max retries 

Inactivity threshold 