According to the docker-compose reference,
Ports is defined as:
Expose ports. Either specify both ports (HOST:CONTAINER), or just the container port (a random host port will be chosen).
- Ports mentioned in docker-compose.yml will be shared among different services started by the docker-compose.
- Ports will be exposed to the host machine to a random port or a given port.
My docker-compose.yml looks like:
mysql:
image: mysql:5.7
ports:
- "3306"
If I do docker-compose ps, it will look like:
Name Command State Ports
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
mysql_1 docker-entrypoint.sh mysqld Up 0.0.0.0:32769->3306/tcp
Expose is defined as:
Expose ports without publishing them to the host machine - they’ll only be accessible to linked services. Only the internal port can be specified.
Ports are not exposed to host machines, only exposed to other services.
mysql:
image: mysql:5.7
expose:
- "3306"
If I do docker-compose ps, it will look like:
Name Command State Ports
---------------------------------------------------------------
mysql_1 docker-entrypoint.sh mysqld Up 3306/tcp
Edit
In recent versions of Dockerfile, EXPOSE typically doesn't have any operational impact anymore, it is just informative. (see also)
