Docker inspect - Retrieve network's information

Use docker inspect to quickly retrieve detailed configuration and network information for your Docker containers in JSON format. Get a power tip with jq.

December 27, 2023 · 3 min read

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Christophe

Markdown, WSL and Docker lover ~ Insatiable curious.

Cet article existe aussi en français — lire la version française.

This article is over a year old but was reviewed on July 30, 2026 — the content is still accurate.

Docker inspect - Retrieve network's information

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TL;DR

This article shows how to use docker inspect <container> to get a container's full JSON configuration, and how to pull out just the network name/IP from the NetworkSettings.Networks property using docker inspect <container> | jq -r '.[0].NetworkSettings.Networks'.

The docker inspect command is used to retrieve detailed information about various Docker objects, including images, containers, volumes, networks, and nodes. It provides a comprehensive overview of the object's configuration, state, and other relevant details.

The returned information is a JSON representation of the object.

One use case is to be able to retrieve the name of the network used by a given container.

Get the network name in one line

You have a container running and you want to know which network it is attached to. One command:

user@machine: ~/yourproject

$ docker inspect phpinfo | jq -r '.[0].NetworkSettings.Networks'▋

You'll get something like this:

{
  "bridge": {
    "IPAMConfig": null,
    "Links": null,
    "Aliases": null,
    "NetworkID": "efd8b4ee99a7d4283cdfecd122a9357ea8415d3f7cb60b53bda36f1f08d76847",
    "EndpointID": "58ff9063ffdb295ed5b9935a036c2f32225312a3290fdcd90eda96e5f5b6c12b",
    "Gateway": "172.17.0.1",
    "IPAddress": "172.17.0.3",
    "IPPrefixLen": 16,
    "IPv6Gateway": "",
    "GlobalIPv6Address": "",
    "GlobalIPv6PrefixLen": 0,
    "MacAddress": "02:42:ac:11:00:03",
    "DriverOpts": null
  }
}

There it is: the network name is the key (bridge here), and right below it the Gateway and IPAddress you usually need in the same breath. Replace phpinfo with your own container name and you're done.

If you don't have the jq binary yet, please read the The jq utility for Linux article.

The full inspect output

That one-liner is just a filter on a much bigger answer. Running docker inspect <container_name> (in our case, docker inspect phpinfo) without jq gives a very detailed JSON representation:

[
    {
        "Id": "1243e5a1d063920759525befa6e374fe2a9bc7ae032559877522e59d7afdc6e8",
        "Created": "2023-12-12T07:52:38.480516578Z",
        "Path": "docker-php-entrypoint",
        "Args": [
            "apache2-foreground"
        ],
        [...]
        "NetworkSettings": {
            [...]
            "Networks": {
                "bridge": {
                    "IPAMConfig": null,
                    "Links": null,
                    [...]
                }
            }
            [...]
        }
        [...]
    }
]

The highlighted lines are the ones the jq filter above walks through: NetworkSettings, then Networks. Everything else in that dump — mounts, environment, entrypoint, state, health — is available the same way, by pointing jq at another property.

No container running? Create one to play with.

For the illustration, please start a Linux shell and run mkdir -p /tmp/inspect && cd $_.

Create a new index.php file with this content:

<?php

phpinfo();

This is a simple PHP script that outputs detailed information about the PHP installation and configuration. It's commonly used for debugging to see what version of PHP is running, which extensions are loaded, and other server settings.

Then run docker run --name phpinfo -d -p 8080:80 -u ${UID}:${GID} -v "$PWD":/var/www/html php:8.2-apache to create a new Docker container (you can surf to http://localhost:8080 to see it in action).

When running docker container list we can retrieve our container named phpinfo.

Conclusion

docker inspect answers with everything, which is exactly why it feels useless the first time you run it. Paired with jq and a property path, it becomes the fastest way to get one precise fact about a running container — and the network name is the one you'll need most often.

Two concrete applications of exactly that: attaching a database UI to an existing container in Using Adminer, pgadmin or phpmyadmin, and diagnosing why two containers can't talk to each other in Troubleshooting for Docker containers.