Reverse Proxy with HTTPS

Imagine you have started an application within the PHP container that creates a listening port (e.g.: NodeJS). This will now only listen on the PHP container and you would have to adjust the docker-compose.yml definition in order to have that port available outside to your host OS.

Alternatively, there is a simple way to reverse proxy it to the already running web server and even make use of the available HTTPS feature.

Read more about how to autostart applications:

custom-scripts-per-php-version (individually for different PHP versions)
custom-scripts-globally (equal for all PHP versions)

Walkthrough

Assumption

Let’s imagine you have started an application in the PHP container with the following settings:

env_TLD_SUFFIX: loc
getting-started-directory-overview-project-directory inside PHP container: /shared/httpd/my-app
env-httpd-datadir on the host: ./data/www
env-httpd-template-dir: .devilbox
Listening port: 8081
Listening host: php (any of the PHP container)
Resulting vhost name: my-app.loc

Copy vhost-gen templates

The reverse vhost-gen templates are available in cfg/vhost-gen:

host> tree -L 1 cfg/vhost-gen/

cfg/vhost-gen/
├── apache22.yml-example-rproxy
├── apache22.yml-example-vhost
├── apache24.yml-example-rproxy
├── apache24.yml-example-vhost
├── nginx.yml-example-rproxy
├── nginx.yml-example-vhost
└── README.md

0 directories, 7 files

For this example we will copy all *-example-rproxy files into /shared/httpd/my-app/.devilbox to ensure this will work with all web servers.

host> cd /path/to/devilbox
host> cp cfg/vhost-gen/apache22.yml-example-rproxy data/www/my-app/.devilbox/apache22.yml
host> cp cfg/vhost-gen/apache24.yml-example-rproxy data/www/my-app/.devilbox/apache24.yml
host> cp cfg/vhost-gen/nginx.yml-example-rproxy data/www/my-app/.devilbox/nginx.yml

Adjust port

By default, all vhost-gen templates will forward requests to port 8000 into the PHP container. Our current example however uses port 8081, so we must change that accordingly for all three templates.

Adjust Apache 2.2 template

Open the apache22.yml vhost-gen template in your project:

host> cd /path/to/devilbox
host> vi data/www/my-app/.devilbox/apache22.yml

Find the two lines with ProxyPass and ProxyPassReverse and change the port from 8000 to 8081

# ... more lines above ... #

###
### Basic vHost skeleton
###
vhost: |
  <VirtualHost __DEFAULT_VHOST__:__PORT__>
      ServerName   __VHOST_NAME__

      CustomLog  "__ACCESS_LOG__" combined
      ErrorLog   "__ERROR_LOG__"

      # Reverse Proxy definition (Ensure to adjust the port, currently '8000')
      ProxyRequests On
      ProxyPreserveHost On
      ProxyPass / http://php:8081/
      ProxyPassReverse / http://php:8081/

# ... more lines below ... #

Adjust Apache 2.4 template

Open the apache24.yml vhost-gen template in your project:

host> cd /path/to/devilbox
host> vi data/www/my-app/.devilbox/apache24.yml

Find the two lines with ProxyPass and ProxyPassReverse and change the port from 8000 to 8081

# ... more lines above ... #

###
### Basic vHost skeleton
###
vhost: |
  <VirtualHost __DEFAULT_VHOST__:__PORT__>
      ServerName   __VHOST_NAME__

      CustomLog  "__ACCESS_LOG__" combined
      ErrorLog   "__ERROR_LOG__"

      # Reverse Proxy definition (Ensure to adjust the port, currently '8000')
      ProxyRequests On
      ProxyPreserveHost On
      ProxyPass / http://php:8081/
      ProxyPassReverse / http://php:8081/

# ... more lines below ... #

Adjust Nginx template

Open the nginx.yml vhost-gen template in your project:

host> cd /path/to/devilbox
host> vi data/www/my-app/.devilbox/nginx.yml

Find the lines with proxy-pass and change the port from 8000 to 8081

# ... more lines above ... #

###
### Basic vHost skeleton
###
vhost: |
  server {
      listen       __PORT____DEFAULT_VHOST__;
      server_name  __VHOST_NAME__;

      access_log   "__ACCESS_LOG__" combined;
      error_log    "__ERROR_LOG__" warn;

      # Reverse Proxy definition (Ensure to adjust the port, currently '8000')
      location / {
        proxy_set_header Host $host;
        proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
        proxy_pass http://php:8081;
      }

# ... more lines below ... #

Restart the Devilbox

Now for the changes to take affect, simply restart the Devilbox (or start if not yet running):

host> cd /path/to/devilbox

# Stop the Devilbox
host> docker-compose stop
host> docker-compose rm -f

# Start the Devilbox (PHP and HTTPD container only)
host> docker-compose up -d php httpd bind

Start your application

Enter the PHP container and start your application which creates the listening port in port 8081.

This can also be automated to happen automatically during docker-compose up via:

custom-scripts-per-php-version (individually for different PHP versions)
custom-scripts-globally (equal for all PHP versions)
Example: autostarting-nodejs-apps

Visit your project

That’s it, your service application will now be available via:

http://my-app.loc

It will also be available on HTTPS. This is by default and automatically:

https://my-app.loc

setup-valid-https

And is even shown as a project in the Devilbox intranet: