Docker v 20.10 and above (since December 14th 2020)
Use your internal IP address or connect to the special DNS name host.docker.internal which will resolve to the internal IP address used by the host.
This is for development purpose and does not work in a production environment outside of Docker Desktop.
Linux caveats
To enable this in Docker on Linux, add --add-host=host.docker.internal:host-gateway to your docker command to enable the feature.
To enable this in Docker Compose on Linux, add the following lines to the container definition:
extra_hosts:
- "host.docker.internal:host-gateway"
According to some users the special DNS name only works within the Docker's default bridge network, not within custom networks.
Docker v 18.03 and above (since March 21st 2018)
Use your internal IP address or connect to the special DNS name host.docker.internal which will resolve to the internal IP address used by the host.
Linux support pending https://github.com/docker/for-linux/issues/264
Docker for Mac v 17.12 to v 18.02
Same as above but use docker.for.mac.host.internal instead.
Docker for Mac v 17.06 to v 17.11
Same as above but use docker.for.mac.localhost instead.
Docker for Mac 17.05 and below
To access host machine from the docker container you must attach an IP alias to your network interface. You can bind whichever IP you want, just make sure you're not using it to anything else.
sudo ifconfig lo0 alias 123.123.123.123/24
Then make sure that you server is listening to the IP mentioned above or 0.0.0.0. If it's listening on localhost 127.0.0.1 it will not accept the connection.
Then just point your docker container to this IP and you can access the host machine!
To test you can run something like curl -X GET 123.123.123.123:3000 inside the container.
The alias will reset on every reboot so create a start-up script if necessary.
Solution and more documentation here: https://docs.docker.com/desktop/networking/#use-cases-and-workarounds-for-all-platforms