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dev-nginx

Tools to configure a local development nginx setup to proxy our applications and services with SSL using mkcert.

This typically allows accessing servers via service.local.dev-gutools.co.uk, rather than a localhost:PORT URL, which among other things makes it possible to share cookies for the pan-domain authentication.

Strange errors or behaviour

See troubleshooting faq

What does dev-nginx do?

Installing and running dev-nginx will start an nginx server instance locally on your machine.

This instance will use any *.conf files found locally within the directory /nginx/servers to generate a virtual server host to proxy requests to localhost. You can locate this directory with the command dev-nginx locate.

Each project config should include http directives for proxy localhost ports and necessary SSL certificates. This is quite repetitive, so dev-nginx abstracts it away with the setup-app and setup-cert commands.

What happens when dev-nginx is up and running locally?

  1. The browser will make a request to a local development domain url, e.g. service.local.dev-gutools.co.uk
  2. Request goes out to DNS where *.local.dev-gutools.co.uk is set to resolve back to localhost (IP address: 127.0.0.1)
    • An alternative to using DNS is to add a new development url entry to /etc/hosts file resolving to 127.0.0.1. This can be done with dev-nginx add-to-hosts-file <DOMAIN>.
  3. Nginx server running locally receives the request
  4. Nginx server iterates over its virtual hosts, if it finds a server_name that matches the request, it will then proxy the request to the correct local project server instance.

diagram

Installation

Via Homebrew

brew tap guardian/homebrew-devtools
brew install guardian/devtools/dev-nginx

# update
brew upgrade dev-nginx

Manually

As listed in the Brewfile, dev-nginx requires:

Once you have installed these dependencies, you can:

  • Download the latest release
  • Extract it
  • Add the bin directory to your PATH.

For example:

wget -q https://github.com/guardian/dev-nginx/releases/latest/download/dev-nginx.tar.gz
mkdir -p dev-nginx && tar -xzf dev-nginx.tar.gz -C dev-nginx
export PATH="$PATH:$PWD/dev-nginx/bin"

Usage

dev-nginx has a few commands available. Find them by passing no arguments:

$ dev-nginx

dev-nginx COMMAND <OPTIONS>
Available commands:
- add-to-hosts-file
- link-config
- locate
- restart
- setup-app
- setup-cert
- start

Commands

add-to-hosts-file

dev-nginx add-to-hosts-file

If it does not already exist, adds an entry to /etc/hosts that resolves to 127.0.0.1.

link-config

dev-nginx link-config /path/to/site.conf

Symlink an existing file into nginx configuration. You'll need to restart nginx to activate it (dev-nginx restart).

locate

dev-nginx locate

Locates the directory nginx is installed.

start

dev-nginx start

Starts nginx. Will fail if currently running. Add -g to ignore if nginx is currently running.

restart

dev-nginx restart

Stops, if running, and starts nginx.

setup-cert

dev-nginx setup-cert demo-frontend.foobar.co.uk

Uses mkcert to issue a certificate for a domain, writing it to ~/.gu/mkcert and symlinking it into the directory nginx is installed.

setup-app

dev-nginx setup-app /path/to/nginx-mapping.yml

Generates config for nginx proxy site(s) from a config file, issues the certificate(s) and restarts nginx.

Config format

Your application's configuration is provided as a YAML file in the following format.

Example:

name: demo
domain-root: foobar.co.uk
mappings:
  - port: 9001
    prefix: demo-frontend
  - port: 8800
    prefix: demo-api

In general, the format is as follows:

name: <name of the project, used as its filename>
mappings: <list of server mappings>
ssl: <optional, defaults to `true` (you are unlikely to need to change this)>
domain-root: <optional, defaults to `local.dev-gutools.co.uk`>

Each mapping supports the following fields:

prefix

required

This is the domain prefix used for the service and will be prepended to the domain. The default domain is local.dev-gutools.co.uk but this can be overridden using the domain-root key at the top level (to apply to all mappings) or in a mapping (to set the domain root for just that mapping).

port

required

This sets the port that will be proxied - i.e. the upstream backend service. These are commonly in the 9XXXs or 8XXXs.

websocket

This optionally sets the path for a websocket. If present, nginx will be configured to serve websocket traffic at that location.

client_max_body_size

Optionally instructs nginx to set a max body size on incoming requests.

domain-root

The domain under which the service should run, which defaults to local.dev-gutools.co.uk. This can also be overriden for all mappings by specifying a domain-root key at the top level.

Hosts file

You'll need to ensure your hosts file has entries for your new domains, so that they resolve:

127.0.0.1   demo-frontend.foobar.co.uk
127.0.0.1   demo-api.foobar.co.uk