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Raj Aryan
Raj Aryan

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🚀 Dockerize Your Next.js App for CI/CD & Deployment \[Complete Guide]

#webdev #javascript #docker #nextjs

Want to deploy your Next.js app like a pro? This post will help you Dockerize your app and set up a seamless CI/CD pipeline using GitHub Actions, then deploy it to any cloud provider or server.

🧱 1. Start with Your Next.js App 

npx create-next-app my-nextjs-app cd my-nextjs-app
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📦 2. Create a Production-Ready Dockerfile 

FROM node:18-alpine AS builder WORKDIR /app COPY package*.json ./ RUN npm install COPY . . RUN npm run build FROM node:18-alpine AS runner WORKDIR /app ENV NODE_ENV=production COPY --from=builder /app/public ./public COPY --from=builder /app/.next ./.next COPY --from=builder /app/node_modules ./node_modules COPY --from=builder /app/package.json ./package.json EXPOSE 3000 CMD ["npm", "start"]
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📂 3. Add a .dockerignore 

node_modules .next/cache Dockerfile .dockerignore
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🧪 4. Test Locally 

docker build -t my-nextjs-app . docker run -p 3000:3000 my-nextjs-app
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🤖 5. GitHub Actions CI/CD Workflow

Create .github/workflows/deploy.yml:

name: Deploy on: push: branches: [main] jobs: build: runs-on: ubuntu-latest steps: - uses: actions/checkout@v3 - uses: docker/setup-buildx-action@v3 - uses: docker/login-action@v3 with: username: ${{ secrets.DOCKER_USERNAME }} password: ${{ secrets.DOCKER_PASSWORD }} - run: | docker build -t myuser/nextjs-app:${{ github.sha }} . docker push myuser/nextjs-app:${{ github.sha }} - uses: appleboy/ssh-action@v1.0.0 with: host: ${{ secrets.SERVER_HOST }} username: ${{ secrets.SERVER_USER }} key: ${{ secrets.SERVER_SSH_KEY }} script: | docker pull myuser/nextjs-app:${{ github.sha }} docker stop nextjs-app || true docker rm nextjs-app || true docker run -d -p 3000:3000 --name nextjs-app myuser/nextjs-app:${{ github.sha }}
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☁️ 6. Where Can You Deploy?

  • VPS (DigitalOcean, Linode, etc.)
  • Render / Railway
  • AWS ECS + ECR
  • Google Cloud Run
  • Fly.io

✅ Summary

With this setup:

  • You Dockerize your Next.js app
  • Automate builds & deployment via CI/CD
  • Ensure portability, consistency, and scalability

👉 Read the Full Guide on Medium

This was a quick overview. For detailed steps, visuals, and pro tips:

📖 Read full tutorial here

Let me know in the comments how you deploy your Next.js apps or if you'd like a version with PostgreSQL, Redis, or NGINX reverse proxy! 🐳💥

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