Question

Using Nginx to host multiple Node.js applications

Posted on May 14, 2015• Last validated on July 18, 2023
Nginx Node.js DigitalOcean
Asked by hk9

server {
    listen 80;

    server_name greatwallprojects.com;

    location / {
        proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:8080;
        proxy_http_version 1.1;
        proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
        proxy_set_header Connection 'upgrade';
        proxy_set_header Host $host;
        proxy_cache_bypass $http_upgrade;
    }

    location /pingtest/  {
            proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:8081;
            proxy_http_version 1.1;
            proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
            proxy_set_header Connection 'upgrade';
            proxy_set_header Host $host;
            proxy_cache_bypass $http_upgrade;
        }
    }

The second application pingtest is not displayed. My application folders lie in home/user/

You can check the problem by visiting http://greatwallprojects.com/pingtest/ a blank page is displayed.

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KFSys

Site Moderator

• July 18, 2023

Heya,

First, it’s important to ensure that both your Node.js applications are running correctly on their respective ports (8080 for the main application, and 8081 for the /pingtest/ application).

Once you have confirmed that, let’s check your NGINX configuration. From what you’ve shared, it seems like the configuration is generally correct. However, when using the location directive to serve a Node.js app from a subdirectory (in your case /pingtest/), there can be issues related to the way paths are handled.

By default, when you use proxy_pass with the URL path specified (http://127.0.0.1:8081), Nginx will pass the exact same request URI to the upstream server. So, when you’re visiting http://greatwallprojects.com/pingtest/, Nginx is trying to serve http://127.0.0.1:8081/pingtest/, which might not be correctly handled by your Node.js app.

To solve this, you can use a URI in the proxy_pass directive. This will cause Nginx to replace the part of the request URI that matches the location path with the path specified in the proxy_pass directive.

Here’s how you can modify your configuration:

location /pingtest/  {
    rewrite ^/pingtest/(.*) /$1 break;
    proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:8081;
    proxy_http_version 1.1;
    proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
    proxy_set_header Connection 'upgrade';
    proxy_set_header Host $host;
    proxy_cache_bypass $http_upgrade;
}

This configuration uses the rewrite directive to rewrite the request URI, stripping out the /pingtest/ part, before passing the request to your Node.js application.

After making these changes, don’t forget to test your configuration and reload Nginx:

sudo nginx -t
sudo systemctl reload nginx

Please note that your Node.js application should be set up to correctly handle requests based on this configuration. If the application is expecting requests to be at /pingtest/, you will need to adjust its routing accordingly.

Michał Czeraszkiewicz • May 14, 2015

This comment has been deleted

Michał Czeraszkiewicz • May 14, 2015

This comment has been deleted