Spin up an InfluxDB instance with docker for testing.

It is a reality that we tend to make things harder than they might be when we try to use and connect various databases.
Since docker came out things became a lot easier.

Most databases like Mongodb, InfluxDB etc come with the binaries needed to spin up the database but also with the clients needed in order to connect. Actually it pretty much starts to become a standard.

We will make a showcase of this by using InfluxDB’s docker image and the data walkthrough.

Let’s start with spinning up the instance.

docker run --rm -p 8086:8086 --name influxdb-local influxdb

We have an influxDB instance running on port 8086 under the name influxdb-local. Once the container is stopped it will also be deleted.

First step is to connect to an influxDB shell and interact with the database.

docker exec -it influxdb-local influx
CREATE DATABASE NOAA_water_database
> exit

Now let’s import some data

docker exec -it influxdb-local /bin/bash
curl https://s3.amazonaws.com/noaa.water-database/NOAA_data.txt -o NOAA_data.txt
influx -import -path=NOAA_data.txt -precision=s -database=NOAA_water_database
rm NOAA_data.txt

Next step is to connect to the shell and query some data.

docker exec -it influxdb-local influx -precision rfc3339 -database NOAA_water_database
Connected to http://localhost:8086 version 1.4.x
InfluxDB shell 1.4.x
> SHOW measurements
name: measurements
name
----
average_temperature
h2o_feet
h2o_pH
h2o_quality
h2o_temperature
>

As you can see we just created an InfluxDB instance with data ready to execute queries and have some tests! Pretty simple and clean. Once we are done by stopping the container all data and the container included shall be removed.