Stopping Docker Containers By Partial Name

tl;dr: Add this to your .zshrc (or equivalent for your shell) and call it with `docker-stop-by-name part_of_my_container_name

docker-stop-by-name() {
    docker ps --filter name=$1 --format={{.ID}} | xargs docker stop
}

I’ve been closing some gaps in my Docker CLI knowledge. Recently, I’ve been needing to stop a running container by name more often. Usually, I would do this directly with docker stop.

docker stop my_container_name

In this case part of the container’s name is randomized. I don’t know the full container name. Luckily, I can get that using the --filter option on docker ps.

$ docker ps --filter name=my_container_name
CONTAINER ID   IMAGE     COMMAND                  CREATED      STATUS          PORTS                     NAMES
f131918121aa   mariadb   "/bin/sh -c 'echo Co…"   2 days ago   Up 10 minutes    0.0.0.0:3306->3306/tcp   my_container_name_123

I really just want the name though, so let’s use the --format option to just get the container’s ID.

$ docker ps --filter name=my_container_name --format={{.ID}}
f131918121aa

Now I have the ID of the container I want to stop, so I can use xargs to turn that ID into the input to docker stop.

$ docker ps --filter name=my_container_name --format={{.ID}} | xargs docker stop

Finally, instead of having to remember that command every time I need it, I created an alias with parameters in my .zshrc file.

docker-stop-by-name() {
    docker ps --filter name=$1 --format={{.ID}} | xargs docker stop
}

And now I can just type docker-stop-by-name part_of_my_container_name any time I need to stop a container full or partial name.