Forwarding VIRTUAL_HOST to other containers in docker-compose.yml

[georgediaz88]

I'm using a docker-compose.yml to run my web app and have brought in nginx-proxy as a container:

# docker-compose.yml

nginxproxy:
   restart: always
   image: jwilder/nginx-proxy
   volumes:
     - /var/run/docker.sock:/tmp/docker.sock:ro
   ports:
     - "80:80"

web:
  build: .
  command: ./script/start_docker
  environment:
    VIRTUAL_HOST: app.docker
    VIRTUAL_PORT: 3000
  ports:
    - "3000:3000"
    - "3010:3010"
  links:
    ...

other-container:
  ...
  ^^ can't reach app.docker:3000

This works fine and is reachable by my web app container if I pass a VIRTUAL_HOST=app.docker and VIRTUAL_PORT=3000. However, in other containers, where I'd like to reach the VIRTUAL_HOST, I can't. Even in my "web" container I can't curl by the VIRTUAL_HOST. Any ideas how to make the VIRTUAL_HOST available on my other containers? Do I need to pass VIRTUAL_HOST for every container? I'm still unsure. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

[jwilder]

You need to send the request from your other containers to your nginxproxy container's port 80 and specify the correct Host header. You could probably specify some extra_hosts config options to your other containers to create hosts entry for app.docker <your host ip>. You could also look at: http://engineering.ifttt.com/oss/2015/10/06/developing-with-docker/ which uses dnsmasq to handle DNS resolution locally.

[georgediaz88]

@jwilder thanks for response.

Okay, that makes sense. It seemed I was missing a step somewhere. It was almost too easy ;). I'll take a look at both solutions. Thanks.