Docker extension in VS Code

Another way to interact with Docker images and containers is through VS Code. If you have installed the PeterJausovec.vscode-docker Docker extension, as suggested in Chapter 2, Create a Local Weather Web Application, you will see an expandable title named DOCKER in the Explorer pane of VS Code, as pointed out with an arrow in the following screenshot:

Docker extension in VS Code

Let's go through some of the functionality provided by the extension:

1. Images contains a list of all the container snapshots that exist on your system
2. Right-clicking on a Docker image brings up a context menu to run various operations on it, like run, push and tag

1. Containers list all executable Docker containers that exist on your system, which you start, stop or attach to
2. Registries display the registries that you're configured to connect to, like DockerHub or AWS Elastic Container Registry

While the extension makes it easier to interact with Docker, npm Scripts for Docker automate a lot of the chores related to building, tagging and testing and image. They are cross-platform and will work equally well in a continuous integration environment.

You may find it confusing to interact with npm scripts in general through the CLI. Let's look at VS Code's npm script support next.