inspired by

This project was initially based on https://github.com/jwilder/nginx-proxy

what

The idea behind this project is to be able to provision web interfaces and expose them through a reverse proxy by using a CLI interface.

If you are a network administrator within your company, or if you only need to setup a test environment, this proxy can be useful.

For instance, let's say that you have a joomla server running on port 8888 somewhere in your network, for instance at address 192.168.1.123, and let's say that you have an http server running on port 80 in a server that is configured to be reached from internet by accessing the root domain example.com as well as the subdomains; for instance, a.example.com, b.example.com, etc.

If you want to expose your joomla instance, you have to setup a reverse proxy within the exposed http server so that every request to myjoomla.example.com, for instance, is transparently forwarded to 192.168.1.123:8888

In order to do that you have to manually edit nginx configuration or add a manually created file within the sites-available folder.

Things get more complicated if you want to use SSL.

This project tries to solve this by providing a CLI interface that allows you to provision a new subdomain site without editing any nginx configuration file manually.

getting started

npm install -g @ethiclab/easy-cli
easy

You should see and output like:

2019-08-12 15:35:44.117224966 - [INFO ] - found EASY_DIR=/home/montoyaedu/docker-nginx-http-proxy
2019-08-12 15:35:44.120070955 - [INFO ] - EASY_LETSENCRYPT_DIR is not set!

Just define the following environment variables into your profile file:

export EASY_LETSENCRYPT_DIR=/some_persistent_backed_up_folder
export EASY_DOMAINS_DIR=/some_other_persistent_backed_up_folder

Then when you execute the easy command you get:

2019-08-12 15:37:14.923010417 - [INFO ] - found EASY_DIR=/home/montoyaedu/docker-nginx-http-proxy
2019-08-12 15:37:14.926147567 - [INFO ] - Invalid command: 
2019-08-12 15:37:14.928410671 - [INFO ] - Available commands are:
proxy

help

For obtaining a list of possible commands that you can use with easy proxy you can try the command easy proxy help

easy proxy help
usage:
    easy proxy create
    easy proxy sh
    easy proxy log
    easy proxy build
    easy proxy new
    easy proxy id
    easy proxy status
    easy proxy start
    easy proxy stop
    easy proxy destroy
    easy proxy restart
    easy proxy reload
    easy proxy certbot
    easy proxy rfc2136
    easy proxy help

easy proxy create

The command easy proxy create creates and starts the nginx proxy.

If you obtain something like:

easy proxy
Unable to find image 'ethiclab/nginx-easy:latest' locally
docker: Error response from daemon: manifest for ethiclab/nginx-easy:latest not found.
See 'docker run --help'.

It means that you need to build the docker image first. Please execute the following command first:

easy proxy build

start nginx proxy (needs docker)

easy proxy
docker network create network1
docker run -d --name server1 nginx
docker network connect network1 $(easy proxy status)
docker network connect network1 server1
easy proxy new http server1.example.com example.com http://server1
easy proxy reload

now visit: http://server1.example.com

IMPORTANT: Remember that server1.example.com must resolve to the ip address where the proxy is running.

development

link easy with your local working folder

git clone git@github.com:ethiclab/docker-nginx-http-proxy.git
cd docker-nginx-http-proxy
. ./configure-local-devenv

start a local dns

docker run -d -p 53:53/tcp -p 53:53/udp -p10000:10000/tcp sameersbn/bind

visit webmin

open https://localhost:10000 with user root and password password

configure a new domain with wildcard support.

Mac OSX

networksetup -listallnetworkservices
networksetup -getdnsservers <networkservice>
networksetup -setdnsservers <networkservice> <dns1> [dns2] [...]

How to publish npm package

npm login

npm publish