clibdocker is a C language implementation of the Docker Engine API v1.39. The C API organization is similar to the reference JSON API specification.

API Coverage

API Coverage is tracked at a granular level in a separate document Docker API Coverage.

API Organization

The Docker API is organized around the objects managed by the docker runtime. There is one header file, with one set of functions per Docker Object in this API.

Docker API Object	Header File
Docker Result	docker_result.h
Docker Connection	docker_connection_util.h
Docker Containers	docker_containers.h
Docker Images	docker_images.h
Docker Networks	docker_networks.h
Docker System	docker_system.h
Docker Volumes	docker_volumes.h
Docker Ignore	docker_ignore.h
Docker Log	docker_log.h

Single Header File

The docker_all.h file includes all the other important header files.

Goals

Simplicity: Easy to understand and use API
Safety: Good memory management, Documentation ensures warnings about safe usage, thread safety.
Efficiency: Keep calls lightweight to enable heavy usage.

Limitations

This method calls in the API are synchronous, which means the calling thread will block for response.