Configure environment VIRTUAL_HOST in your containers

When you want a container's to be hosted on a domain set VIRTUAL_HOST environment variable to desired server_name entry. For virtual host to work it requires

• nginx-proxy container to be on the same network as that of the container.
• port to be exposed in Docker file or while creating the container. When missing or if it has multiple exposed ports, port 80 is used by default.
• when hosting on port other than 80, make sure that your nginx-proxy container's port is bind-mounted to host port.

Some configurations possible through VIRTUAL_HOST

VIRTUAL_HOST	release address	container path	container port
example.com	http://example.com	/	exposed port
example.com:8080	http://example.com:8080	/	exposed port
example.com -> :8080	http://example.com	/	8080
https://example.com	https://example.com	/	exposed port
example.com/api	http://example.com/api	/api	exposed port
example.com/api/ -> /	http://example.com/api	/	exposed port
example.com/api -> :8080/api	http://example.com/api	/api	8080
https://example.com/api/v1:5001 -> :8080/api	https://example.com/api/v1:5001	/api	8080
wss://example.com/websocket	wss://example.com/websocket	/	exposed port

With VIRTUAL_HOST you can inject nginx directives into location each configuration must be separed with a ; . You can see the possible directives in nginx documentation.

Example : VIRTUAL_HOST=somesite.example.com -> :8080 ;proxy_read_timeout 900;client_max_body_size 2g; will generate configuration as follows

server{
    server_name somesite.example.com;
    listen 80;
    location /{
        proxy_read_timeout 900;
        client_max_body_size 2g;
        proxy_pass http://127.2.3.4; // your container ip here
    }
}

Support for websocket

Exposing websocket requires the websocket endpoint to be explicitly configured via virtual host. The websocket endpoint can be ws:// or wss://. If you want to use both websocket and non-websocket endpoints you will have to use multiple hosts

-e "VIRTUAL_HOST=wss://ws.example.com -> :8080/websocket"

If you are not sure what paths should be exposed on websocket, you can opt for auto upgrade to websocket.

-e "VIRTUAL_HOST=https+wss://example.com"

Multiple Virtual Hosts on same container

To have multiple virtual hosts out of single container, you can use VIRTUAL_HOST1, VIRTUAL_HOST2, VIRTUAL_HOST3 and so on. In fact the only thing it matters is that the environment variable starts with VIRTUAL_HOST.

Example: setting up a go-ethereum node.

    docker run -d  --network frontend \
    -e "VIRTUAL_HOST1=https://ethereum.example.com -> :8545" \
    -e "VIRTUAL_HOST2=wss://ethereum.example.com/ws -> :8546/" \
    ethereum/client-go \
    --rpc --rpcaddr "0.0.0.0"  --ws --wsaddr 0.0.0.0