How to serve an app's static files.

[cstrutton]

Thanks for all the work you have put into this great project. I must be missing something, but how do I serve an app's static files out of the same container. Do I need to create per VHOST config pointing to a shared volume? Is there an easier way that I am not seeing?

[jwilder]

nginx-proxy just proxies connections to your containers. It can't reach into your container to serve up files from the file system automatically. You would need to have a handler serving up your static assets when nginx-proxy forwards those request back to the container.

You could also use a custom template or vhost config pointing to a shared volume as you said so that nginx-proxy does have access to the files and can serve them directly.

[janekolszak]

If you can use separate VIRTUAl_HOST/domain for static content (say static.example.com):

• Create static.example.com.conf file with something like:

server {
    server_name static.example.com;
    listen 80;
    access_log /var/log/nginx/access.log;
    location / {
        root /www/data;
    }
}

• In dockerfile: COPY static.example.com.conf /etc/nginx/conf.d
• Mount/Copy the data to the nginx container

If you can't use a separate domain

• Create example.com file:

location /static {
    root /www/data;
}

• In dockerfile: COPY example.com /etc/nginx/vhost.d/
• Mount/Copy the data to the nginx container

You may consider a regex for a clever location specification.

[uLan08]

Since this issue was never closed....

I was able to serve static files this way

server {
    server_name static.example.com;
    listen 80;
    access_log /var/log/nginx/access.log;
    location / {
        root /www/data;
    }
}

Will the proxy configurations from /etc/nginx/conf.d/default.conf apply to the one I created? If not, are there any repercussions to this?

[aliallaoui]

@janekolszak solution is great but could it be done in a more general manner by editing nginx.tmpl and using environment variables ( like STATIC_DOMAIN and STATIC_LOCATION) ? I am not used to go templating language so any help is welcome ;)

[uLan08]

For me, I went on a different route than what I originally commented here. I set up a vanilla nginx container that does the serving then I just set it with the usual env vars, VIRTUAL_HOST and VIRTUAL_PORT and nginx-proxy just proxies to that container. This approach adheres to the docker way of containers having only one responsibility and also I think is what jwilder originally suggested.

[1fexd]

For me, I went on a different route than what I originally commented here. I set up a vanilla nginx container that does the serving then I just set it with the usual env vars, VIRTUAL_HOST and VIRTUAL_PORT and nginx-proxy just proxies to that container. This approach adheres to the docker way of containers having only one responsibility and also I think is what jwilder originally suggested.

I get that this is the "cleanest" way, but isn't a setup like this quite resource-expensive, since every request for a static file has to pass through two nginx instances? I also found this stackoverflow post where the author suggests to use nginx-proxy's nginx instance, are there any repercussions to doing it like this?

[tkw1536]

You should probably use Per Virtual-Host Configuration config for this.