.. _docker-accessing-outside-data:


======================
Accessing outside data
======================

To use Mayan EDMS's staging folders or watch folders from Docker, the data
for these source must be made accessible to the container. This is done by
mounting the folders in the host computer to folders inside the container.
This is necessary because Docker containers do not have access to host data
on purpose. For example, to make a folder in the host accessible as a watch
folder, add the following to the Docker command line when starting the
container::

    -v /opt/scanned_files:/scanned_files

The command line would look like this::

    docker run ... -v /opt/scanned_files:/scanned_files mayanedms/mayanedms:latest

Now create a watch folder in Mayan EDMS using the path ``/scanned_files``
and the documents from the host folder ``/opt/scanned_files`` will be
automatically available. Use the same procedure to mount host folders to be
used as staging folders. In this example ``/scanned_files`` was used as the
container directory, but any path can be used as long as:

- the path not an already existing path
- the path is not used by any other program
- the path is a single level path