The easiest answer is the following:
container_name: This is the container name that you see from the host machine when listing the running containers with the docker container ls
command.
hostname: The hostname of the container. Actually, the name that you define here is going to the /etc/hosts
file:
$ exec -it myserver /bin/bash
bash-4.2# cat /etc/hosts
127.0.0.1 localhost
172.18.0.2 myserver
That means you can ping machines by that names within a Docker network.
I highly suggest set these two parameters the same to avoid confusion.
An example docker-compose.yml file:
version: '3'
services:
database-server:
image: ...
container_name: database-server
hostname: database-server
ports:
- "xxxx:yyyy"
web-server:
image: ...
container_name: web-server
hostname: web-server
ports:
- "xxxx:xxxx"
- "5101:4001" # debug port