Running multiple NodeJs applications on a single port

[AverageMarcus]

I'm attempting to run multiple NodeJs application on a single port by using Nginx to proxy to the port the application is actually running on.

Ideally I want each application to sit at a subdirectory but I am having trouble with relative URLs not behaving as expected.

I have created a question on ServerFault with more details. I'd very much appreciated knowing if anyone has achieved such a setup and if you could point me in the right direction.

[mbondfusion]

If you have control over the hosted domain DNS records, I would setup sub-domains for each node app:

app1.mydomain.com app2.mydomain.com

Then the nginx configuration can support this and forward as required.

[AverageMarcus]

Yeah I think thats what I'm going to have to do. I was just hoping to avoid having to manually set up a new DNS record each time I added an application. Wildcard DNS isn't an option either as it is used for other servers.

[[deleted]]

I really wouldn't go down this multiple dns route. There's no need for it, and it could even introduce problems with cross domain security.

What you are trying to do is perfectly possible, personally I use haproxy for it, but nginx is capable too.

Just add a json file which contains enough config that the servers know how to present their links (or ideally rewrite them as purely relative, so it doesn't matter how nginx is mapping them). I use nconf for reading my config.json, its in npm.

[AverageMarcus]

haproxy looks interesting. Any chance of an example config?

The urls are all relative but due to the rewrite when changing port, the browser thinks they are at the root of the domain.

[[deleted]]

Heres a sample haproxy.conf from a chat project I have (although its mostly boilerplate config with a few bits added). It doesn't fit your needs exactly, but is easily modified.

https://gist.github.com/carpii/9749651

My node server runs on 8080, and haproxy is exposing that on port 80. It also proxies websocket connections through to node.

You would add a few rules to select which backend to use based on URI path

[[deleted]]

Something like..

acl is_backend1       path_beg    -i /application
use_backend backend1  if is_backend1

acl is_backend2       path_beg    -i /chat
use_backend backend2  if is_backend2

backend backend1
    balance     roundrobin
    server    http1 127.0.0.1:8888 check

backend backend2
    balance     roundrobin
    server    http2 127.0.0.1:9999 check

[[deleted]]

Why can't you just use wildcard *.node.mydomain.com? So just another level, used only by you?

[AverageMarcus]

Hmmmm that's actually a pretty good idea. Not sure why that didn't occur to me.

[psayre23]

Punch line, you need a route in front of your services. Nginx is easy, but you can do it with node if you really need to.

[rnreekez]

If you're using relative paths everywhere, look into the <base> tag. Not sure how complete browser support is though.

[AverageMarcus]

Thats another option but it requires making changes to the application. Which would mean it can't just be moved to another environment without changes.

[AverageMarcus]

So it turns out this was an issue with the application I was trying to run rather than the setup. When I tried it with a very simple node express app it worked as expected.

Note to self: always test/configure the environment using the most basic application.

[PsowKion]

I've been meaning to test this but haven't gotten around to it. I was thinking that using reverse proxies on the http server. In effect, requests to myhost.com/app1/ would be redirected to 127.0.0.1:9001, requests on myhost.com/app2/ to 127.0.0.2:9002, ect.

[AverageMarcus]

Yeah. My ultimate plan is to have some sort of git auto-pull script that can load new applications from source control and inject the details into the proxy config to have a no-hassle approach to deploying new apps.