Communication between multiple docker-compose projects

Just a small adittion to @johnharris85's great answer, when you are running a docker compose file, a "default" network is created so you can just add it to the other compose file as an external network:

# front/docker-compose.yml 
version: '2' 
  services:   
    front_service:
    ...

...

# api/docker-compose.yml
version: '2'
services:
  api_service:
    ...
    networks:
      - front_default
networks:
  front_default:
    external: true

For me this approach was more suited because I did not own the first docker-compose file and wanted to communicate with it.

UPDATE: As of compose file version 3.5:

This now works:

version: "3.5"
services:
  proxy:
    image: hello-world
    ports:
      - "80:80"
    networks:
      - proxynet

networks:
  proxynet:
    name: custom_network

docker-compose up -d will join a network called 'custom_network'. If it doesn't exist, it will be created!

root@ubuntu-s-1vcpu-1gb-tor1-01:~# docker-compose up -d
Creating network "custom_network" with the default driver
Creating root_proxy_1 ... done

Now, you can do this:

version: "2"
services:
  web:
    image: hello-world
    networks:
      - my-proxy-net
networks:
  my-proxy-net:
    external:
      name: custom_network

This will create a container that will be on the external network.

I can't find any reference in the docs yet but it works!

You just need to make sure that the containers you want to talk to each other are on the same network. Networks are a first-class docker construct, and not specific to compose.

# front/docker-compose.yml
version: '2'
services:
  front:
    ...
    networks:
      - some-net
networks:
  some-net:
    driver: bridge

...

# api/docker-compose.yml
version: '2'
services:
  api:
    ...
    networks:
      - front_some-net
networks:
  front_some-net:
    external: true

Note: Your app’s network is given a name based on the “project name”, which is based on the name of the directory it lives in, in this case a prefix front_ was added

They can then talk to each other using the service name. From front you can do ping api and vice versa.