How do I use docker commands --format option?

I can't seem to find any good documentation on how to use the docker command's "--format" option in real life. I know how to use Go templates. But specific to docker, how do I know what placeholders are available to use?

I tried docker inspect on a container and I see JSON output, but I can't use the names from that as Go template placeholders. I did find out that the placeholders are case-sensitive, which seems unfortunate. The default output isn't much help either, since (I assume) it isn't showing me everything I might use, the columns that are there are all uppercase, and they sometimes have spaces in them. docker container ls, for example, has a column called "CONTAINER ID". No combination of underscores, quoting schemes, or so on will make that name work. I figured out that it's "{{.ID}}".

How am I supposed to be using "--format"? How do I discover placeholders for any given docker object?

Answer

This article can be a good start.