Creating a host volume mapping to contents inside a directory in the container , so that the contents can be viewed and edited from host

Question

Let's say I have a directory /var/www/html inside the container. I want to view it's contents outside in let's say ~/my_user/sites ( folder sites is not yet created ). I know I can use the volume mapping in docker-compose as follows-

volumes:
  - ~/my_user/sites:/var/www/html

But whenever I do this, the directory /var/www/html inside the container is mounted to an empty directory, therefore itself become empty. I know that this is how mounting is supposed to work but isn't there a way by which I can get access to the contents of the container in the host directory structure itself.

Also, if you have an easy workaround this then please mention that.

I'd recommend checking out the original source tree from source control. You can't directly mount a container's files to the host or directly edit the files, and in any case changes you make inside a container will be lost as soon as the container exits. That is: any sort of volume mount _always_ hides the content that was originally present in the image. — David Maze, Feb 06 '22 at 17:23
The "Mount directory in Container" question I linked to describes the sorts of changes you'd need to make in the image to replicate its files to a mounted volume. However, if you can do this, you probably already have the original source files. — David Maze, Feb 06 '22 at 17:25

Creating a host volume mapping to contents inside a directory in the container , so that the contents can be viewed and edited from host

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