How to sort or order results docker ps --format? [closed]

Question

I haven't found any way to order my results when using docker ps

In my case I want to order by .Ports

docker ps -a --format "table {{.ID}}\t{{.Names}}\t{{.Ports}}"

How do I order the result?

Answer 1

If it's enough to simply sort by output column, you can use the following:

 docker ps -a --format "table {{.ID}}\t{{.Names}}\t{{.Ports}}" | (read -r; printf "%s\n" "$REPLY"; sort -k 3 )

I also added a code for skipping the table headers and sorting only ps output data.

Answer 2

I built a docker ps pretty print function that can be put into your .bash_profile or .bashrc file that works somewhat like an alias for docker ps (with color output). @art-rock-guitar-superhero suggestions shows how to sort, but I've included this answer since typing the --format options and piping into a sort every time is a bit tedious.

function docker () {
    if [[ "$@" == "ps -p" ]]; then
        command docker ps --all --format "{{.ID}}\t{{.Names}}\t{{.Image}}\t{{.Ports}}\t{{.Status}}" \
            | (echo -e "CONTAINER_ID\tNAMES\tIMAGE\tPORTS\tSTATUS" && cat) \
            | awk '{printf "\033[1;32m%s\t\033[01;38;5;95;38;5;196m%s\t\033[00m\033[1;34m%s\t\033[01;90m%s %s %s %s %s %s %s\033[00m\n", $1, $2, $3, $4, $5, $6, $7, $8, $9, $10;}' \
            | column -s$'\t' -t \
            | awk 'NR<2{print $0;next}{print $0 | "sort --key=2"}'
    else
        command docker "$@"
    fi
}

usage: $ docker ps -p.

EDIT: I added suggestions from the comments from @BrianVosburgh. Also, I kept forgetting to type -p so I switched the flag for this function to be -a, which is my regular usage of docker ps.

Answer 3

Format and Order docker ps

List containers

docker ps

Synopsis

docker ps [--format="TEMPLATE"]

--format="TEMPLATE"
  Pretty-print containers using a Go template.
  Valid placeholders:
     .ID - Container ID
     .Image - Image ID
     .Command - Quoted command
     .CreatedAt - Time when the container was created.
     .RunningFor - Elapsed time since the container was started.
     .Ports - Exposed ports.
     .Status - Container status.
     .Size - Container disk size.
     .Names - Container names.
     .Labels - All labels assigned to the container.
     .Label - Value of a specific label for this container. For example {{.Label "com.docker.swarm.cpu"}}
     .Mounts - Names of the volumes mounted in this container.

Display containers with their commands

docker ps --format "{{.ID}}: {{.Command}}"

Display containers with their labels in a table

docker ps --format "table {{.ID}}\t{{.Labels}}"

Display containers with their node label in a table

docker ps --format 'table {{.ID}}\t{{(.Label "com.docker.swarm.node")}}'

Answer 4

I usually want to sort the output by container name, which appears at the very end of each line, so I use a sed substitution to add a temporary copy of the desired column (the last column) to the front of the line, sort the new lines, then remove that temporary column:

docker ps |
sed -E 's/(^.* )([^ ]*$)/\2 \1\2/' |
LC_ALL=C sort |
cut -d' ' -f2-

The regex (^.* )([^ ]*$) matches the last group of characters on each line that doesn't contain a space ([^ ]*$), then captures that group (that regex is enclosed in parentheses), as well as all of the characters preceding it ((^.* )). The expression \2 \1\2 is then the second group (the container name field), a space, and the original line including the original container name field.

Setting LC_ALL=C in the environment of sort ensures that fields are sorted lexicographically, so that "NAME" still appears as the column heading in the final output, rather than these headings appearing as some row other than the first row.

cut -d' ' -f2- then strips out the temporary leading "NAME" column from the final output: it prints fields/columns from number 2 onwards, where fields are delimited by space characters.

This is a pretty convenient way of sorting by container name, since I don't need to do something more cumbersome, like strip out extraneous spaces between columns, use sort to sort by a particular column, and then add back the spaces to format the columns nicely again.

I have this pipeline as a shell alias called docker-pss:

alias docker-pss="docker ps | sed -E 's/(^.* )([^ ]*$)/\2 \1\2/' | LC_ALL=C sort | cut -d' ' -f2-"

---

Since you want to sort by ports, and your docker ps format string has this as the last column, you should be able to use this pipeline to achieve that. However, if you want to sort by the actual port numbers that appear in this column (e.g. 80 in ::1->80/tcp or 80/tcp), you'll have to match on the value that appears between the possible arrow (->) and guaranteed slash (/) in this field.

Here's how you could do that using a sed expression of a similar nature to the one above, using the default output of docker ps, not using a custom format string:

{
  echo -n 'PORT ' # Add extra heading for temporary column. This won't appear in the final output
  docker ps
} |
sed -E 's/(^.*(->| ))([0-9]+)(\/.*$)/\3 \1\3\4/' |
sort -nt' ' -k1,1 |
cut -d' ' -f2-

This won't correctly sort lines with an empty "PORTS" field. Instead, it will strip their container ID from the output and sort them as if their container ID was their port number. If you want to exclude such lines from the output, you can filter them out with grep before running sed:

{
  echo -n 'PORT '
  docker ps
} |
grep -E '^PORT |(->| )[0-9]+/' | # Filter out lines that lack a port number, except the heading line
sed -E 's/(^.*(->| ))([0-9]+)(\/.*$)/\3 \1\3\4/' |
sort -nt' ' -k1,1 |
cut -d' ' -f2-

Answer 5

Prettify Docker ps output

• open terminal
• run export command to export Env Variable
• you can customise according to desired output needed

export FORMAT="ID\t{{.ID}}\nNAME\t{{.Names}}\nIMAGE\t{{.Image}}\nPORTS\t{{.Ports}}\nCOMMAND\t{{.Command}}\nCREATED\t{{.CreatedAt}}\nSTATUS\t{{.Status}}\n"

• run command docker ps --format="$FORMAT"

e.g Output

khizerrehan@khizerrehans-MacBook-Pro ~ % docker ps --format="$FORMAT"
ID  9bfbfe65dce1
NAME    happy_joliot
IMAGE   nginx:alpine
PORTS   0.0.0.0:80->80/tcp, :::80->80/tcp
COMMAND "/docker-entrypoint.…"
CREATED 2021-09-05 00:20:45 +0500 PKT
STATUS  Up 4 minutes

Answer 6

I know this is not strictly related to the OP question, but if you want to sort on the Status date, you need to support date that are relatives : Up 2 days ago, Shutdown about a day ago etc.
This bash script generates an ISO date from the Status value, then we sort on the ISO date and finally we remove the ISO date.

# 1- List all containers 
#    As I'm working with swarm, you may want to adapt to your docker cli usage. 
#    Use "docker ps --format '{{ json . }}" to see available fields
# 2- add a column that translate "Shutdown 2 days ago" into ISO date. Also supports "Shutdown about a day ago". 
# 3- sort on that date
# 4- remove the ISO date and add colors
# 5- make the output readable
docker stack ps --format '{{ .CurrentState }}\t{{ .Name }}\t{{.Node}}\t{{.Image}}' demo \
  | awk -F'\t' '{system("date --rfc-3339=seconds -u -d \"$(printf \"" $1 "\" | cut -d \" \" -f2- | sed \"s/about//g\") \" | tr -d \"\n\"") ; printf "\t%s\t%s\t%s\t%s\t%s\n", $1, $2, $3, $4, $5;}' \
  | sort -r \
  | awk -F'\t' '{ printf "\033[32m%s\033[39m\t%s\t%s\t%s\n", $2, $3, $4, $5, $6;}' \
  | column -o " " -t -s $'\t'

It generates something like that :