To start using docker-java , you need to add at least two dependencies:

1. com.github.docker-java:docker-java-core for the DockerClient
2. one of com.github.docker-java:docker-java-transport-* to communicate with the Docker daemon. See Available Transports for more info.

The latest available version:

You will need an instance of DockerClientConfig to tell the library how to access Docker, which credentials to use to pull from Docker registries, etc etc.

The builder is available and allows you to configure every property of the client:

import com.github.dockerjava.core.DockerClientConfig
import com.github.dockerjava.core.DefaultDockerClientConfig
DockerClientConfig standard = DefaultDockerClientConfig.createDefaultConfigBuilder().build();

import com.github.dockerjava.core.DockerClientConfig
import com.github.dockerjava.core.DefaultDockerClientConfig

DockerClientConfig custom = DefaultDockerClientConfig.createDefaultConfigBuilder()
    .withDockerHost("tcp://docker.somewhere.tld:2376")
    .withDockerTlsVerify(true)
    .withDockerCertPath("/home/user/.docker")
    .withRegistryUsername(registryUser)
    .withRegistryPassword(registryPass)
    .withRegistryEmail(registryMail)
    .withRegistryUrl(registryUrl)
    .build();

Here you can tune registry auth, DOCKER_HOST and other options.

There are a couple of configuration items, all of which have sensible defaults:

• DOCKER_HOST The Docker Host URL, e.g. tcp://localhost:2376 or unix:///var/run/docker.sock
• DOCKER_TLS_VERIFY enable/disable TLS verification (switch between http and https protocol)
• DOCKER_CERT_PATH Path to the certificates needed for TLS verification
• DOCKER_CONFIG Path for additional docker configuration files (like .dockercfg)
• api.version The API version, e.g. 1.23.
• registry.url Your registry's address.
• registry.username Your registry username (required to push containers).
• registry.password Your registry password.
• registry.email Your registry email.

There are three ways to configure, in descending order of precedence:

DOCKER_HOST=tcp://localhost:2376
DOCKER_TLS_VERIFY=1
DOCKER_CERT_PATH=/home/user/.docker/certs
DOCKER_CONFIG=/home/user/.docker
api.version=1.23
registry.url=https://index.docker.io/v1/
registry.username=dockeruser
registry.password=ilovedocker
registry.email=dockeruser@github.com

java -DDOCKER_HOST=tcp://localhost:2375 -Dregistry.username=dockeruser pkg.Main

export DOCKER_HOST=tcp://localhost:2376
export DOCKER_TLS_VERIFY=1
export DOCKER_CERT_PATH=/home/user/.docker/certs
export DOCKER_CONFIG=/home/user/.docker

In $HOME/.docker-java.properties

In the class path at /docker-java.properties

Should you need to customize the Jackson's ObjectMapper used by docker-java, you can create your own DockerClientConfig and override DockerClientConfig#getObjectMapper().

Once you decided which transport to use, you will need to instantiate an HTTP client:

DockerClientConfig config = ...;

DockerHttpClient httpClient = new ApacheDockerHttpClient.Builder()
    .dockerHost(config.getDockerHost())
    .sslConfig(config.getSSLConfig())
    .maxConnections(100)
    .connectionTimeout(Duration.ofSeconds(30))
    .responseTimeout(Duration.ofSeconds(45))
    .build();

Please refer to selected transport's builder for other available configuration options (like timeouts).

Once you have an HTTP client, you can make raw requests to the Docker daemon directly:

Request request = Request.builder()
    .method(Request.Method.GET)
    .path("/_ping")
    .build();

try (Response response = httpClient.execute(request)) {
    assertThat(response.getStatusCode(), equalTo(200));
    assertThat(IOUtils.toString(response.getBody()), equalTo("OK"));
}

To get an instance of DockerClient, you need to pass both DockerClientConfig and DockerHttpClient:

DockerClient dockerClient = DockerClientImpl.getInstance(config, httpClient);

Once you have it, you can start executing Docker commands:

dockerClient.pingCmd().exec();