Set up nginx proxy for react application

Question

I'm trying to create a docker-compose using two services, a Spring Boot backend (running on port 8080) and React frontend running on Nginx.

The react app calls backend API like /api/tests. However, when I run the docker compose and frontend makes a request, it always fails with 404 error: GET http://localhost/api/tests 404 (Not Found)

When I set the frontend dockerfile not to use Nginx, just npm start, it worked fine, but I would prefer using production build on Nginx.

Current frontend dockerfile:

FROM node:11.13 as builder

RUN mkdir /usr/src/app
WORKDIR /usr/src/app

ENV PATH /usr/src/app/node_modules/.bin:$PATH

COPY package.json /usr/src/app/package.json
RUN npm install
RUN npm install [email protected] -g

COPY ./package-lock.json /usr/src/app/
COPY ./public /usr/src/app/public
COPY ./src /usr/src/app/src

COPY ./nginx.conf /etc/nginx/nginx.conf

RUN npm run build

FROM nginx:1.15.10-alpine
COPY --from=builder /usr/src/app/build /usr/share/nginx/html
CMD ["nginx", "-g", "daemon off;"]

Nginx.conf:

server {
    listen 80;

    location / {
        try_files $uri $uri/ /index.html;
        add_header   Cache-Control public;
        expires      1d;
    }

    location /api {
       proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Host $host;
       proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Server $host;
       proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
       proxy_pass http://server:8080/;
    }
}

docker-compose:

version: "3"

services:
  server:
    build: test-server/
    expose:
      - 8080
    ports:
      - 8080:8080
  ui:
    build: test-ui/
    expose:
      - 80
    ports:
      - 80:80

The react app has a line "proxy": "http://server:8080" in its package.json.

Nginx logs the following error:

2019/04/15 12:50:03 [error] 6#6: *1 open() "/usr/share/nginx/html/api/tests" failed (2: No such file or directory), client: 172.20.0.1, server: localhost, request: "GET /api/tests HTTP/1.1", host: "localhost", referrer: "http://localhost/"

Answer 1

I found the problem. In the multi-stage build of the docker image, I accidentally copied the nginx.conf file into the builder image, not the production one.

The fixed Dockerfile now looks like this:

# build environment
FROM node:11.13 as builder

RUN mkdir /usr/src/app
WORKDIR /usr/src/app

ENV PATH /usr/src/app/node_modules/.bin:$PATH

COPY package.json /usr/src/app/package.json
RUN npm install
RUN npm install [email protected] -g

COPY ./package-lock.json /usr/src/app/
COPY ./public /usr/src/app/public
COPY ./src /usr/src/app/src


RUN npm run build

# production environment
FROM nginx:1.15.10-alpine
COPY --from=builder /usr/src/app/build /var/www
COPY ./nginx.conf /etc/nginx/nginx.conf
CMD ["nginx", "-g", "daemon off;"]

and nginx.conf:

server {
    listen 80;
    include /etc/nginx/mime.types;
    root /var/www;
    index index.html index.htm;
    location /api {
        resolver 127.0.0.11;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Host $host;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Server $host;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
        proxy_pass http://server:8080$request_uri;
    }
    location / {
        try_files $uri $uri/ =404;
    }
}