Containuum is a library for subscribing to changes in container state. It monitors the event stream from docker, and emits deduplicated lists of containers to subscribers. It's intended to be used by tools that automatically generate config files based on container labels (e.g. for a reverse proxy), or perform other updates when a container starts/stops (e.g. adding DNS entries).

Basic usage

Containuum exposes a "Run" function which takes a context, a callback, and options. The Run function blocks until it fails or the context is cancelled.

package main
import (
	"context"
	"log/slog"
	"github.com/csmith/containuum"
)
func main() {
	err := containuum.Run(
		context.Background(),
		func(containers []containuum.Container) {
			slog.Info("Received containers", "count", len(containers))
		},
		containuum.WithFilter(containuum.LabelExists("web")),
	)
	if err != nil {
		slog.Error("Failed to monitor containers", "err", err)
	}
}

Options

The following options can be passed to Containuum:

• WithDockerClient provides a specific Docker client to use. If not specified, one is created with default values. You can customise the behaviour of the default Docker client using env vars.
• WithFilter applies a filter to containers that are returned. See the filters section below. Only one top-level filter may be applied.
• WithDebounce configures the debounce on incoming container events. This can reduce how often the callback is invoked on exceptionally busy systems or when a container is misbehaving. Default: 100ms
• WithMaxDebounceTime configures the maximum time events will be debounced for. This ensures that a constant stream of events emits updates at some point, rather than effectively becoming a denial-of-service attack. Default: 5s.
• WithMaxIdleTime configures the period at which Continuum will refresh the containers even if it hasn't received an event. This is a useful fallback in case the event stream silently fails. Default: 30s.
• WithAutoReconnect configures automatic reconnection to the event stream. If not specified, Containuum will error if the stream is disconnected, and clients must call Run() again to resume. Reconnection is performed with an exponential back-off, up to a maximum time limit.

Filters

If you are only interested in a subset of containers, you can filter them out by passing a filter to the WithFilter option. This occurs before deduplication, ensuring that changes to other containers don't result in your callback being invoked. The following filters are available:

• Any(filter, filter, ...) - matches containers that matches any of the given filters
• All(filter, filter, ...) - matches containers that matches all of the given filters
• Not(filter) - matches containers that do not match the given filter
• LabelExists(string) - matches containers that have the specified label, with any value
• LabelEquals(string, string) - matches containers that have the specified label with the specified value
• StateEquals(string) - matches contains in the given state (running, stopped, etc)

Only a single filter may be passed to WithFilter, but you can build complex filter chains using Any and/or All as required.

Provenance

This project was primarily created with Claude Code, but with a strong guiding hand. It's not "vibe coded", but an LLM was still the primary author of most lines of code. I believe it meets the same sort of standards I'd aim for with hand-crafted code, but some slop may slip through. I understand if you prefer not to use LLM-created software, and welcome human-authored alternatives (I just don't personally have the time/motivation to do so).