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Question

How to redirect apache public url to docker container?

I searched already that it has something to the redirect module in apache, but I decided to ask here if someone can give me a direction where I should follow, because I am a bit lost.

The current situation is: I have a droplet with CentOS 7 x64 and within this droplet my docker user with some docker containers (just showing 2 to better exemplify):

CONTAINER ID        IMAGE                     COMMAND                  CREATED             STATUS              PORTS                      NAMES
f381c6a9a341        image1                  "docker-entrypoint..."   4 weeks ago         Up 3 weeks          0.0.0.0:15435->5432/tcp    app1_postgres
69fb1e99b463        image2-nodejs_web      "/docker-entrypoin..."   3 weeks ago          Up 3 weeks          0.0.0.0:10443->443/tcp   app1_nodejs

There is a container for the nodejs app and another container of the database for this app. Everything works and they can communicate with each other.

Besides, in this same droplet (outside docker) I have the user apache where I run httpd with my static portfolio in my custom domain https://www.myportfolio.dev.

What I would like: If I access https://www.myportfolio.dev/apps/app1 it redirects somehow from the apache to the docker container running my nodejs app in the exposed port 10443.

What I could do until now: if someone access https://www.myportfolio.dev:10443, which is the https port I have opened for the nodejs container, the app is accessible, but this is not the approach I want. I want to have the /apps/APP_NAME in the url redirecting to the specific containers.

Additional info 1: I usually have routes in my nodejs and react apps, for example:

https://myapp.com/ https://myapp.com/login https://myapp.com/home https://myapp.com/products https://myapp.com/insert

among other routes, and the redirect should work fine for this routes also.

Additional info 2: Either in my portfolio either in my apps I always use SSL. Please correct me if I am wrong, but the SSL key pairs for my portfolio can also be used for all my apps, because the apache httpd remains the same, it will be used as a “proxy” !?

Additional Question: Should I also create a subdomain for this app from the example before I configure them in apache? Something like CNAME e.g. myapp1.myportfolio.dev?

I would be really thankful for every help I receive here.

Thanks in advance!

Best Regards, Gabriel

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Bobby Iliev • April 30, 2020

Hi there @gabrielbrde,

What you could do is configure Apache as a reverse proxy, that way you can have the traffic for specify different URLs to be proxied to specific Docker containers, for example, it would look something like this:

    ProxyPreserveHost On

    ProxyPass /apps/APP_NAME http://127.0.0.1:15435/
    ProxyPassReverse /apps/APP_NAME http://127.0.0.1:15435/

You can take a look at this tutorial here on how to configure Apache as a Reverse Proxy with mod_proxy:

https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-use-apache-as-a-reverse-proxy-with-mod_proxy-on-ubuntu-16-04

Hope that this helps! Regards, Bobby

Gabriel • September 18, 2020

Hi @tinieblas ,

thanks for your reply to my post.

I tried what you said but I still get errors and do not really know how to fix it.

Maybe a better idea would be to create subdomains and use them instead of using my portfolio domain to it.

Kind Regards

Gabriel • May 2, 2020

Hello everyone, just a short update:

Yesterday I saw my error, I could access https://mywebsite.dev:10443 because I was running docker with 0.0.0.0 (which means the docker container was also reachable for outside).

I corrected it by changing to 127.0.0.1 in the docker-compose.yml:

version: "3.7"
services:
  db:
    image: postgres:alpine
    command: -p 5435
    environment:
      POSTGRES_USER: psgadmin
      POSTGRES_PASSWORD: 12345
      PG_PORT: 5435
      POSTGRES_DB: snippetfy
    volumes:
      - pgdata:/var/lib/postgresql/data
    restart: always
    networks:
      - app-network
    container_name: postgres-db

  web:
    build: .
    depends_on:
      - db
    ports:
      - 127.0.0.1:10443:10443      
    volumes:
      - webapp:/home/node/app
      - /home/node/app/node_modules
    environment:
      DATABASE_URL: ${DATABASE_URL}
      NODE_ENV: ${NODE_ENV}
    networks:
      - app-network
    container_name: snippetfy-node
    hostname: snippetfy-node

volumes:
  pgdata:
  webapp:

networks:
  app-network:
    driver: bridge

Now at least I cannot reach anymore by typing https://mywebsite.dev:10443.

However my problem is still not solved, I do not know what else I can do to make the proxy works correctly and finally access my app(s) through https://mywebsite.dev/apps/app_name.

I am thankful for every help!

Best Regards, Gabriel

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