docker-compose RabbitMQ Generator

RabbitMQ is one of those pieces where the version with the management dashboard is worth far more than the plain one during development: you can see queues, publish a test message, inspect what got stuck and wipe everything with a click. The image with the dashboard ships ready, and the difference is one tag in the name.

Enter a user and password and the page assembles the service, exposing both ports: the protocol one, where the application connects, and the dashboard one, which opens in a browser. The credentials go in as environment variables and replace the default pair — which is public and well known, and should therefore never survive into anything reachable over a network.

Worth knowing that without a declared volume everything is lost when the container is recreated: queues, exchanges, persisted messages and users created through the dashboard. In development that is often desirable, since it guarantees a clean slate. When it is not, RabbitMQ's data directory needs mounting as a volume — and remember that the node name forms part of the data identity, so changing the container name can leave RabbitMQ unable to recognise the old volume.