I’m learning full stack development by creating a project with a MySQL database/express API. My application was working “properly”, then I tried to dockerize it. I wrote a docker-compose file:

services:
  db:
    image: mysql:latest
    command: --bind-address='0.0.0.0'
    container_name: mysql_db
    ports:
      - "3306:3306"
    environment:
      MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD: password
      MYSQL_DATABASE: housesdb
      MYSQL_PASSWORD: password
    volumes:
      - app-data:/var/lib/mysql
    networks:
      - my-network

version: '3'

services:
  db:
    image: mysql:latest
    command: --bind-address='0.0.0.0'
    container_name: mysql_db
    ports:
      - "3306:3306"
    environment:
      MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD: password
      MYSQL_DATABASE: housesdb
      MYSQL_PASSWORD: password
    volumes:
      - app-data:/var/lib/mysql
    networks:
      - my-network

  api:
    build: ./Backend
    container_name: node_api
    ports:
      - "3005:3005"
    environment:
      DB_HOST: db
      DB_PORT: 3306
      DB_USER: root
      DB_PASSWORD: password
      DB_NAME: housesdb
    depends_on:
      - db
    networks:
      - my-network

  web:
    build: ./frontend-jm
    container_name: react_app
    ports:
      - "3000:3000"
    
    depends_on:
      - db
      - api
    
    networks:
      - my-network
      
networks:
  my-network:
    driver: bridge

volumes:
  app-data:

The problem is that my node.js API has an “ECONNREFUSED” error while trying to get a connection with the MySQL container. I can connect to the MySQL database with MySQL Workbench from my host.

At first, I thought that MySQL was blocking access from app when the app address wasn’t localhost. To verify it, I started a MySQL container like this: docker run -it --rm mysql:tag --verbose --help, but I can see that the value “bind-address” from the configuration file of MySQL is “*” in the terminal.

After I made some research, I tried this command:

alter user 'root'@'%' identified with mysql_native_password by 'password'

And I then had this error:

Error Code: 1524. Plugin ‘mysql_native_password’ is not loaded

How can I fix this?