Creating a job from images in IBM Cloud Container Registry

Create your job configuration that uses an image in IBM Cloud® Container Registry. You can create a job from the console or with the CLI.

Before you begin

You must have an image in Container Registry. For more information, see Getting started with Container Registry. Or, you can build an image from repository source or from local source.
Verify that you can access the registry. See Setting up authorities for container registries.

Interested in configuring your project such that all users of the project can store and access images in Container Registry without having to manually create registry secrets? With sufficient permissions, you can configure this default registry access on a per location (region) basis. If you don't have sufficient permissions to perform these actions, you can use this page to help you understand the required permissions. See Configuring project-wide settings.

Creating a job that references an image in Container Registry with the console

Create a job configuration that uses an image in Container Registry by using the Code Engine console.

Code Engine can automatically pull images from a Container Registry namespace in your account. To pull images from a different Container Registry account or from a private Docker Hub account, see Create a job from images in a private registry.

Open the Code Engine console.
Select Let's go.
Select Job.
Enter a name for the job; for example, myjob.
Select a project from the list of available projects. You can also create a new one. Note that you must have a selected project to create a job.
Select Container image and click Configure image.
Select a container registry location, such as IBM Registry Dallas.
Select Code Engine managed secret for Registry secret. Because this example uses an image in a Container Registry namespace in your account, Code Engine can automatically create and manage the registry secret for you.
Select an existing namespace and name of the image in the registry for the Code Engine job to reference. For example, select mynamespace and select the image hello_repo in that namespace.
Select a value for Tag; for example, latest.
Click Done.
Modify any default values for environment variables or runtime settings. For more information about these options, see Options for creating and running a job.
From the Create job page, click Create.
From your job page, click Submit job to submit a job based on the current configuration.

Now that you have created your job and run your job, you can view details about your job configuration and job runs from your job page.

If you want to add registry access before you create a job, see Accessing container registries.

Creating a job with an image in Container Registry with the CLI

Create a job configuration that uses an image in IBM Cloud® Container Registry with the CLI, use the job create command. For a complete listing of options, see the ibmcloud ce job create command.

Before you begin

Set up your Code Engine CLI environment.
Create and work with a project.
Before you can work with a Code Engine job that references an image in Container Registry, you must first add access to the registry so Code Engine can pull the image when the job is run. For information about required permissions for accessing image registries, see Setting up authorities for image registries.

To add access to Container Registry, create an IAM API key. To create an IBM Cloud IAM API key from the CLI, run the iam api-key-create command. For example, to create an API key called cliapikey with a description of "My CLI API key" and save it to a file called key_file, run the following command:
```
ibmcloud iam api-key-create cliapikey -d "My CLI API key" --file key_file
```
If you choose to not save your key to a file, you must record the API key that is displayed when you create it. You cannot retrieve it later.
After you create your API key, add registry access to Code Engine. To add access to Container Registry with the CLI, use the ibmcloud ce secret create --format registry command to create a registry secret. For example, the following command creates registry access to a Container Registry instance called myregistry. Note, even though the --server and --username options are specified in the example command, the default value for the --server option is us.icr.io and the --username option defaults to iamapikey when the server is us.icr.io.
```
ibmcloud ce secret create --format registry --name myregistry --server us.icr.io --username iamapikey --password APIKEY
```
Example output
```
Creating registry secret 'myregistry'...
OK
```
Create your job configuration and reference the hello_repo image in Container Registry. For example, the following job create command creates the myhellojob job to reference the us.icr.io/mynamespace/hello_repo by using the myregistry access information.
```
ibmcloud ce job create --name myhellojob --image us.icr.io/mynamespace/hello_repo --registry-secret myregistry
```
The format of the name of the image for this job is REGISTRY/NAMESPACE/REPOSITORY:TAG where REGISTRY and TAG are optional. If REGISTRY is not specified, the default is docker.io. If TAG is not specified, the default is latest.

Next steps

After you create your job, submit the job to run it. See Run a job. You can run your job multiple times.
After you run your job, to view details of your job and job runs, see access job details.
Now that your job is created, consider making your jobs event-driven. By using event subscriptions, you can trigger your jobs by periodic schedules or set your job to react to events like file uploads.
You can update your job and its referenced code in any of the following ways, independent of how you created or previously updated your job.
- If you have a container image, per the Open Container Initiative (OCI) standard, then you need to provide only a reference to the image, which points to the location of your container registry when you create (or update) your job. You can create (or update) your job from images in a public registry or private registry and then access the referenced image from your job run.
  
  If you created your job by using the job create command and you specified the --build-source option to build the container image from local or repository source, and you want to change your job to point to a different container image, you must first remove the association of the build from your job. For example, run ibmcloud ce job update -n JOB_NAME --build-clear. After you remove the association of the build from your job, you can update the job to reference a different image.
- If you are starting with source code that resides in a Git repository, you can choose to let Code Engine take care of building the image from your source and creating (or updating) the job with a single operation. In this scenario, Code Engine uploads your image to IBM Cloud® Container Registry. To learn more, see Creating a job from repository source code. If you want more control over the build of your image, then you can choose to build the image with Code Engine before you create (or update) your job and run the job.
- If you are starting with source code that resides on a local workstation, you can choose to let Code Engine take care of building the image from your source and creating the job with a single CLI command. In this scenario, Code Engine uploads your image to IBM Cloud® Container Registry. To learn more, see Creating your job from local source code with the CLI. If you want more control over the build of your image, then you can choose to build the image) with Code Engine before you create (or update) your job and run the job.
For example, you might choose to let Code Engine handle the build of your local source while you evolve the development of your source for the job. Then, after the image is matured, you can update the job to reference the specific image that you want. You can repeat this process as needed.

When you run your updated job, the latest version of your referenced container image is used for the job run, unless a tag is specified for the image. If a tag is specified for the image, then the tagged image is used for the job run.

Looking for more code examples? Check out the Samples for IBM Cloud Code Engine GitHub repo.