Running dockerized google earth engine (GEE) map

The steps I took to open and run a dockerized geemap:

1. Install docker and learn some useful commands
2. Gather the geemap image from https://hub.docker.com/r/bkavlak/geemap with a docker pull because it seemed like the most updated. I did not follow the instructions for staring things there exactly. I also used a nice youtube video from Simon Mudd. So the following instructions are somewhat bespoke.
3. Make a local directory ~/geemap-data which will be the bridge between the container running the application and my local computer
4. Start the docker container based on the image by running:

    docker run -it --name geemap -p 8888:8888 -v ~/geemap-data:/geemap/data bkavlak/geemap:latest
   

5. This will put me inside the container, where I should see the data directory that is connected to my ~/geemap-data local folder.
6. Start a jupyter environment by running:

    jupyter lab --ip=0.0.0.0 --port=8888 --allow-root
   

7. Open localhost:8888 and copy-paste the unique token=... into the browser.
8. Start a notebook and run ee.Authenticate() to go through the pipeline of getting an authentication token. This needs to be done everytime I open the container. There’s probably a way around this but it’s not a huge deal to re-authenticate when I’m starting work for the day.
9. Work away and save everything into data/ (which will pipe it to my local ~/geemap-data folder).
10. When I exit the container, I also need to delete it or it won’t open next time due to the name being taken. I have tried to just re-open the container, but I’m having problems there. Again, not ideal but it works for now! This is how I drop the container (the image stays though so it makes for quick rebooting from step 4 above):

    docker ps -a
    docker rm -f <container-ID>
    

Now I can make some sweet maps:

Some more notes on docker

On my M2 Mac with arm64 Apple Silicon architecture, I need to build images by adding FROM --platform=linux/amd64 <parent-image> to the top of the Dockerfile.

Then I can build as usual with docker build -t <image-name> .

Then when I want to run an image locally I need to supply the platform with docker run -it --platform linux/amd64 <image-name>