Suggestions on how to improve docs (no rules read from config file)?

[hartzell]

I'm new to trafik (and like it a lot, THANKS!).

I spent more time than I will happily admit trying to understand why the following configuration file didn't seem to do anything at all:

defaultEntryPoints = ["http"]

[entryPoints]
  [entryPoints.http]
  address = ":80"

[web]
address = ":8086"

[backends]
  [backends.backend1]
    [backends.backend1.servers.server1]
    url = "http://192.168.99.100:8080"

[frontends]
  [frontends.frontend1]
  backend = "backend1"
    [frontends.frontend1.routes.test_1]
    rule = "PathPrefix:/foo/bar/test-1"

It turns out that if you want traefik to read rules from the file that it's already happily reading, you must add a [file] line, even though it's already reading the file, e.g.

# ...
[file]
[backends]
  [backends.backend1]
    [backends.backend1.servers.server1]
# ...

I assumed (dangerous word, that...) that I only needed a [file] section if I wanted to read from some other file.

I'd like to add a couple of explanatory lines to the documentation, but am unsure what to suggest. My best idea is to add something after the first sentence of the file backend docs. It might also be useful to put it someplace more obvious.

There might also be a bug/enhancement here, that any {back,front}ends encountered while parsing the configuration file should be taken to be static configuration, obviating the need for the [file] line. I don't know the code structure well enough to say whether that's crazy talk or a reasonable idea.

It might also be an error to have a config file that doesn't define any {back,front}ends (which is what my starting point was doing...), but I may be missing something.

Feedback?

Thanks!

[emilevauge]

Hi @hartzell

I assumed (dangerous word, that...) that I only needed a [file] section if I wanted to read from some other file.

In fact, we took this opposite point of view. Traefik has a static configuration and a dynamic configuration http://docs.traefik.io/basics/#configuration. If you want to use a file to configure your dynamic configuration (frontends/backends), you need to enable [file] and provide a filname. If you want to put your rules in your global toml configuration file, just leave filename empty ;)

Makes sense ?

[hartzell]

When you explain it clearly, it's easy enough to understand. It's not the only way to think about, and certainly isn't the thing that occurs to me first.

It seems like it's worth a line of extra docs somewhere. Perhaps an additional comment in the sample file or ....

[creynders]

@hartzell agreed. Also, it's not entirely clear IMO what exactly is allowed in the extra config file. For instance can I add my acme config to rules.toml? (which would be fantastic to be honest)
Based on the documentation I'd think you can only put front- and backend configuration in rules.toml.

[ldez]

I'll close this issue, because I think the question is answered, but feel free to continue the conversation.