Failing to get docker to work with react and webpack - reactjs

Question

So, I've been working on this problem for the better part of a week now and I feel like I've gotten nowhere despite reading a lot of articles on this very topic and reading through a lot of stack overflow questions. I've got the following files docker-compose.yml and Dockerfile.dev that I'm trying to use in following this article, https://blog.bam.tech/developper-news/dockerize-your-app-and-keep-hot-reloading. A few differences between my implementation and that article. I can't use the node_modules directory as far as I'm aware from my machine (OSX), as I'm trying to run Docker with a linux environment, so I have to run npm install from within Docker. I don't have an api implemented yet (that is coming, I just want to get this to work first), so all references to api have been removed.
This is my docker-compose.yml:
version: '3'
services:
server:
container_name: server
build: ./server
ports:
- '80:80'
links:
- app:app
app:
container_name: app
build:
context: ../retail
dockerfile: Dockerfile.dev
ports:
- '9000:9000'
volumes:
- ../retail:/usr/src/app/
environment:
- NODE_ENV=development
- NPM_CONFIG_PRODUCTION=false
db:
container_name: database
build: ./database
environment:
POSTGRES_PASSWORD: supersecretpasswordthatnobodyknows
POSTGRES_USER: devsuperuser
POSTGRES_DB: lending
restart: always
ports:
- '5432:5432'
volumes:
- /var/lib/postgresql/data
And this is my Dockerfile.dev referenced above:
FROM node:alpine
WORKDIR /usr/src/app
COPY ./package.json ./.npmrc ./
RUN npm install webpack webpack-cli webpack-server webpack-hot-client -g
RUN npm link webpack webpack-dev-server && npm install
EXPOSE 9000
CMD ["npm", "run", "start:dev"]
Some of the things I've tried are in the above code. Such as setting NPM_CONFIG_PRODUCTION to false. And installing everything webpack globally and then linking it. I found if I didn't do the latter I got errors about not being able to find webpack. I've tried multiple combinations of different ideas from a whole host of articles, but no matter what I've tried I'm constantly getting issues about some missing module or another.
I'm just wondering if someone can help me make this article work for me while needing to do an npm install. Or perhaps even some way that I can do the npm install locally and not need to do it in the Docker container (because that works).
EDIT:
I'm adding another file and part of a file that may or may not be relevant below in response to a comment asking for them.
webpack.config.js
const webpack = require('webpack');
const path = require('path');
const autoprefixer = require('autoprefixer');
module.exports = {
devtool: 'eval-source-map',
context: __dirname,
entry: [
'babel-polyfill',
// 'react-hot-loader/patch',
'webpack-dev-server/client?http://0.0.0.0:9000',
'webpack/hot/only-dev-server',
'./src/index.js',
],
output: {
path: path.join(__dirname, 'www'),
filename: 'bundle.js',
publicPath: '/',
},
devServer: {
disableHostCheck: true,
historyApiFallback: true,
inline: false,
port: 9000,
hot: true,
proxy: {
'/v1': {
target: 'an IP address',
},
},
},
module: {
loaders: [
{
test: /\.(css|scss)$/,
use: [
'style-loader',
{ loader: 'css-loader' },
'sass-loader',
],
},
{
test: /\.(png|jpg|svg|woff|woff2|ttff|eot|ttf)$/,
loader: 'url-loader?limit=25000',
},
{
test: /\.js$/,
loader: 'babel-loader',
include: [
path.join(__dirname, 'src'),
],
exclude: /node_modules/,
options: {
// This is a feature of `babel-loader` for Webpack (not Babel itself).
// It enables caching results in ./node_modules/.cache/babel-loader/
// directory for faster rebuilds.
cacheDirectory: true,
// plugins: ['react-hot-loader/babel'],
},
},
{
test: /config\.js$/,
loaders: 'string-replace-loader',
query: {
multiple: [
{ search: '{{API_SERVER}}', replace: '' },
],
},
},
],
},
plugins: [
new webpack.DefinePlugin({
'process.env': {
NODE_ENV: JSON.stringify(process.env.NODE_ENV),
},
}),
new webpack.HotModuleReplacementPlugin(),
new webpack.LoaderOptionsPlugin({ options: { postcss: [autoprefixer] } }),
],
};
And my script definition for start:dev in my package.json
"start:dev": "webpack-dev-server --host 0.0.0.0 --hot --inline",