Testcontainers for Go modules¶

In this section you'll discover how to create Go modules for Testcontainers for Go, including the steps to follow, the best practices, and the guidelines to consider before creating a new module.

Before creating a new module¶

First, you have to consider the following things before creating a new module to the project:

Please check if the module you are interested in is already present in the Modules Catalog. If it's already there, you can use it as a dependency in your project, and you can also contribute to the module if you want to improve it!
If it is not present there, please consider where you are going to host the module: under your own GitHub account as a Community module, or under the testcontainers-go repository.
If you're a vendor interested in creating an Official module for your project/product, please contact us, see below.

In any case, we will be happy to assist you in the process of creating the module. Please feel free to ask for assistance in our Slack or in the GitHub Discussions.

Community modules¶

If you are going to host the module under your own GitHub account, please consider the following:

you'll have to follow the same guidelines as the ones for the modules hosted under the testcontainers-go repository, including the naming conventions, the documentation, the tests and the testable examples, and defining a proper CI workflow. You'll find more information in the sections below.
you'll be more autonomous in the development and release of the module, not having to wait for the maintainers to review and merge your PRs. As a direct consequence, you'll be responsible for the maintenance, documentation and support of the module, including updating the module to the latest version of Testcontainers for Go if/when needed.
once created, you'll need to add the module to the Modules Catalog in order to be listed there. You can do this by submitting a PR to the community repository. An example can be found here.
you'll need to add the module to the Go documentation in order to be listed there. Please check our Releasing docs for more information about triggering the Golang Proxy.

Modules hosted under the `testcontainers-go` repository¶

If you still want to host the module under the testcontainers-go repository, please consider the following:

we are not experts in all the technologies out there, so we are open to contributions from the community. We are happy to review and merge your PRs, and we are also happy to help you with the development of the module. But this is a shared responsibility, so we expect you to be involved in the maintenance, documentation and support of the module.
the module will be part of the CI/CD pipeline of the testcontainers-go repository, so it will be tested and released with the rest of the modules. Think of Github workflows, release notes, etc. Although it sounds great, which it is, it also means that it will increase the build time in our CI/CD pipeline on Github, including flaky tests, number of dependency updates, etc. So in the end it's more work for us.
once created, we'll add the module to the Modules Catalog and to the Go documentation.

Creating a new module¶

We have provided a command line tool to generate the scaffolding for the code of the example you are interested in. This tool will generate:

a Go module for the example, including:
- go.mod and go.sum files, including the current version of Testcontainer for Go.
- a Go package named after the module, in lowercase
- a Go file for the creation of the container, using a dedicated struct in which the image flag is set as Docker image.
- a Go test file for running a simple test for your container, consuming the above struct.
- a Go examples file for running the example in the docs site, also adding them to https://pkg.go.dev.
- a Makefile to run the tests in a consistent manner
a markdown file in the docs/modules directory including the snippets for both the creation of the container and a simple test. By default, this generated file will contain all the documentation for the module, including:
- the version of Testcontainers for Go in which the module was added.
- a short introduction to the module.
- a section for adding the module to the project dependencies.
- a section for a usage example, including:
  - a snippet for creating the container, from the examples_test.go file in the Go module.
- a section for the module reference, including:
  - the entrypoint function for creating the container.
  - the options for creating the container.
- a section for the container methods.
a new Nav entry for the module in the docs site, adding it to the mkdocs.yml file located at the root directory of the project.
a GitHub workflow file in the .github/workflows directory to run the tests for the example.
an entry in the VSCode workspace file, in order to include the new module in the project's workspace.

Info

If you are hosting the module under your own Github account, please move the generated files to the new repository. Discard the following files and directories: mkdocs.yml, VSCode workspace, Sonarqube properties, and the .github/workflows directory, as they are specific to the testcontainers-go repository. You can use them as reference to create your own CI/CD pipeline.

Command line flags¶

Flag	Short	Type	Required	Description
--name	-n	string	Yes	Name of the module, use camel-case when needed. Only alphanumerical characters are allowed (leading character must be a letter).
--image	-i	string	Yes	Fully-qualified name of the Docker image to be used by the module (i.e. 'docker.io/org/project:tag')
--title	-t	string	No	A variant of the name supporting mixed casing (i.e. 'MongoDB'). Only alphanumerical characters are allowed (leading character must be a letter).

What is this tool not doing?¶

If the module name or title does not contain alphanumerical characters, it will exit the generation.
If the module already exists, it will exit without updating the existing files.

How to run the tool¶

From the modulegen directory, please run:

go run . new module --name ${NAME_OF_YOUR_MODULE} --image "${REGISTRY}/${MODULE}:${TAG}" --title ${TITLE_OF_YOUR_MODULE}

Info

In the case you just want to create an example module, with no public API, please run:

go run . new example --name ${NAME_OF_YOUR_MODULE} --image "${REGISTRY}/${MODULE}:${TAG}" --title ${TITLE_OF_YOUR_MODULE}

Adding types and methods to the module¶

We are going to propose a set of steps to follow when adding types and methods to the module:

Warning

The StartContainer function will be eventually deprecated and replaced with RunContainer. We are keeping it in certain modules for backwards compatibility, but they will be removed in the future.

Make sure a public Container type exists for the module. This type has to use composition to embed the testcontainers.Container type, promoting all the methods from it.
Make sure a RunContainer function exists and is public. This function is the entrypoint to the module and will define the initial values for a testcontainers.GenericContainerRequest struct, including the image, the default exposed ports, wait strategies, etc. Therefore, the function must initialise the container request with the default values.
Define container options for the module leveraging the testcontainers.ContainerCustomizer interface, that has one single method: Customize(req *GenericContainerRequest).
We consider that a best practice for the options is define a function using the With prefix, that returns a function returning a modified testcontainers.GenericContainerRequest type. For that, the library already provides a testcontainers.CustomizeRequestOption type implementing the ContainerCustomizer interface, and we encourage you to use this type for creating your own customizer functions.
At the same time, you could need to create your own container customizers for your module. Make sure they implement the testcontainers.ContainerCustomizer interface. Defining your own customizer functions is useful when you need to transfer a certain state that is not present at the ContainerRequest for the container, possibly using an intermediate Config struct.
The options will be passed to the RunContainer function as variadic arguments after the Go context, and they will be processed right after defining the initial testcontainers.GenericContainerRequest struct using a for loop.

// Config type represents an intermediate struct for transferring state from the options to the container
type Config struct {
    data string
}

// RunContainer function is the entrypoint to the module
func RunContainer(ctx context.Context, opts ...testcontainers.ContainerCustomizer) (*Container, error) {
    cfg := Config{}

    req := testcontainers.ContainerRequest{
        Image: "my-image",
        ...
    }
    genericContainerReq := testcontainers.GenericContainerRequest{
        ContainerRequest: req,
        Started:          true,
    }
    ...
    for _, opt := range opts {
        req = opt.Customize(&genericContainerReq)

        // If you need to transfer some state from the options to the container, you can do it here
        if myCustomizer, ok := opt.(MyCustomizer); ok {
            config.data = customizer.data
        }
    }
    ...
    container, err := testcontainers.GenericContainer(ctx, genericContainerReq)
    ...
    moduleContainer := &Container{Container: container}
    moduleContainer.initializeState(ctx, cfg)
    ...
    return moduleContainer, nil
}

// MyCustomizer type represents a container customizer for transferring state from the options to the container
type MyCustomizer struct {
    data string
}
// Customize method implementation
func (c MyCustomizer) Customize(req *testcontainers.GenericContainerRequest) testcontainers.ContainerRequest {
    req.ExposedPorts = append(req.ExposedPorts, "1234/tcp")
    return req.ContainerRequest
}
// WithMy function option to use the customizer
func WithMy(data string) testcontainers.ContainerCustomizer {
    return MyCustomizer{data: data}
}

If needed, define public methods to extract information from the running container, using the Container type as receiver. E.g. a connection string to access a database:

func (c *Container) ConnectionString(ctx context.Context) (string, error) {...}

Document the public API with Go comments.
Extend the docs to describe the new API of the module. We usually define a parent Module reference section, including a Container options and a Container methods subsections; within each subsection, we define a nested subsection for each option and method, respectively.

ContainerRequest options¶

In order to simplify the creation of the container for a given module, Testcontainers for Go provides a set of testcontainers.CustomizeRequestOption functions to customize the container request for the module. These options are:

testcontainers.CustomizeRequest: a function that merges the default options with the ones provided by the user. Recommended for completely customizing the container request.
testcontainers.WithImage: a function that sets the image for the container request.
testcontainers.WithConfigModifier: a function that sets the config Docker type for the container request. Please see Advanced Settings for more information.
testcontainers.WithEndpointSettingsModifier: a function that sets the endpoint settings Docker type for the container request. Please see Advanced Settings for more information.
testcontainers.WithHostConfigModifier: a function that sets the host config Docker type for the container request. Please see Advanced Settings for more information.
testcontainers.WithWaitStrategy: a function that sets the wait strategy for the container request, adding all the passed wait strategies to the container request, using a testcontainers.MultiStrategy with 60 seconds of deadline. Please see Wait strategies for more information.
testcontainers.WithWaitStrategyAndDeadline: a function that sets the wait strategy for the container request, adding all the passed wait strategies to the container request, using a testcontainers.MultiStrategy with the passed deadline. Please see Wait strategies for more information.

Update Go dependencies in the modules¶

To update the Go dependencies in the modules, please run:

$ cd modules
$ make tidy-examples

Interested in converting an example into a module?¶

The steps to convert an existing example, aka ${THE_EXAMPLE}, into a module are the following:

Rename the module path at the go.mod file for your example.
Move the examples/${THE_EXAMPLE} directory to modules/${THE_EXAMPLE}.
In the mkdocs.yml file, move the entry for ${THE_EXAMPLE} from examples to modules.
Move docs/examples${THE_EXAMPLE}.md file to docs/modules/${THE_EXAMPLE}, updating the references to the source code paths.
Update the Github workflow for ${THE_EXAMPLE}, modifying names and paths.