ARCHIVED

This project is no longer maintained.

The world has changed substantially since I wrote this. I'm currently using kubernetes with external-dns to solve this problem, and Traefik for the proxy part.

This should be considered deprecated.

NGINX Proxy Generator

A container that

subscribes to docker events
writes out NGINX config files to proxy traffic to containers
notifies NGINX to update itself

Includes configuration templates for standard and SSL proxies.

Quick Start

Manual container cration

Create some back end servers with appropriate labels:

docker run -d --name web1 --label proxy.host=www.example.com my-web-server
docker run -d --name web2 --label proxy.host=www.example.com my-web-server

Now create an NGINX proxy server that will be configured to proxy traffic to these systems.

docker run -d --name proxy --label proxy.notify -v /etc/nginx/conf.d -v /usr/share/nginx/html nginx

and last start the generator

docker run -d --name proxy-generator -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock --volumes-from proxy deweysasser/web-proxy-generator

docker-compose

Alternatively, you can use an orchestration tool. Here is an exmaple docker-compose.yml file to demonstrate capability

web1:
  image: nginx
  command: bash -c 'echo $$(hostname) > /usr/share/nginx/html/index.html; nginx -g "daemon off;"'
  labels:
    - proxy.host=www.example.com

web2:
  image: nginx
  command: bash -c 'echo $$(hostname) > /usr/share/nginx/html/index.html; nginx -g "daemon off;"'
  labels:
    - proxy.host=www.example.com


proxy:
  image: nginx
  volumes:
    - /etc/nginx/conf.d
    - /usr/share/nginx/html
  ports:
    - 80:80
  labels:
    - proxy.notify

updater:
  build: .
  volumes_from:
    - proxy
  volumes:
    - /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock

Extending the proxy

Templates are defined in Jinja2. You can override or extend them by arranging for files to be placed in the /templates directory in the container (either via docker inheritance or volume mapping)

There are command line options to override which templates are used in which context. The default is:

vhost.conf -- used to generate a conf file for each virual host
default.conf -- create a default web server
index.html -- used to generate an index file for debugging or index purposes

Alternatives include

vhost-ssl.conf -- generate an SSL terminating proxy (See SSL note)
default-ssl-redirect.conf -- generate a default server that redirects all unencrypted traffic to https
index-ssl.conf -- generate an index.html that links to the https:// sites instead of http:// sites

Using SSL

If you are going to use SSL, you need to make sure you have your SSL configuration in the NGINX container in /etc/nginx/ssl/ssl.conf.

Because of the way SSL works, you will need a certificate that is valid for all proxied sites. You can generate this certificate with LetsEncrypt or a commerical service. Documentation on how to do this would be a welcome contribution to this project (or I'll eventually get to it).

We will eventually support automatic LetsEncrypt certificate generation.