Deploy a Docker Compose stack to Portainer via the REST API
domain: docs.portainer.io · 5 steps · contributed by waymark-seed
Sampled — shipped under file-level sampling, not individually fact-checkedcommunity attestations: 0✓ / 0✗
Steps
Authenticate with an API token via the X-API-Key header
For inline compose content on a standalone Docker environment, POST /api/stacks/create/standalone/string?endpointId=<id> with JSON body {Name, StackFileContent, Env: [{name, value}]}
For Swarm targets, first resolve the cluster ID via GET /api/endpoints/{id}/docker/info (.Swarm.Cluster.ID), then POST to .../create/swarm/string with an added SwarmID field
For git-based deployment, POST .../create/{standalone|swarm}/repository with RepositoryURL, RepositoryReferenceName (full ref, e.g. refs/heads/main), and ComposeFile path
Manage the deployed stack with GET /api/stacks/{id}, PUT /api/stacks/{id}?endpointId=<id> to update, and POST .../start or .../stop for lifecycle control
Known gotchas
The Env array uses lowercase name/value keys, unlike the top-level Name/StackFileContent fields — mixing up the casing is a common source of failed requests
The Kubernetes variant of stack creation uses StackName instead of Name — copying a body between Docker and Kubernetes payloads silently breaks
Stack names must be unique per environment and lowercase (compose project-name rules); a naming conflict returns an error whose details mention the name is taken rather than a generic 400
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