This project is no longer maintained.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.

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.

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

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

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

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.