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Discussion on: Docker 201: Use NGINX as a Reverse Proxy for NodeJS Server in 2020! 📦 🙌 (practical guide)

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luiscarlosb3 profile image
Luis Carlos Galvão de Oliveira

nice article, have you any tips about static files? I've been some problems with css and js front end scripts locations

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rhernandog profile image
Rodrigo Hernando

What worked for me was to create a different folder with nginx and use docker compose in order to run and connect everything at the same time. It works fine in development. Here is the repo I have so far:
github.com/rhernandog/docker-expre...

Since I just started with docker a couple of weeks ago, I can't get it to work on production though. I can make it work with the static files but I can't find a way to start the express API server.

If someone could lend me a hand I'd appreciate it. Here is how my Dockerfile looks so far:

FROM nginx AS static
WORKDIR /app
COPY ./client /app

FROM node:12-alpine AS api
WORKDIR /app
COPY ./server/package.json /app
RUN npm install
COPY ./server /app

FROM nginx
COPY ./nginx/default.conf /etc/nginx/conf.d/default.conf
COPY --from=static /app /usr/share/nginx/html
EXPOSE 80

If I remove the middle section (all the node part) it works fine, but as I said I can't find a way to start the express server.

If you user the code in the repo, running docker-compose up --build is going to work fine, as long as you provide your own mongo database of course.