# Copy files from the host to the Docker container

By

Paul Tomoiu

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In 

Docker

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Published 2022-12-03

This tutorial explains to you how to copy files from host to Docker container. Copying files from the Docker container to the host is quite similar.

A Docker container could keep files, directories as a virtual machine, and it's a regular task to copy files from the host machine to the Docker container or vice-versa.

This task is done very simple using the docker cp command:

docker cp [OPTIONS] CONTAINER:SRC_PATH DEST_PATH|-
docker cp [OPTIONS] SRC_PATH|- CONTAINER:DEST_PATH

Here it is an example.

You can see that into the DIR1 directory there are no files:

On the host you run the docker cp command:

And here it is the result on the target (Docker container):