Implementing Virtual Hosts in NGINX for Nodejs Based Applications

Background

We'll use NGINX as a proxy to listen to requests to 2 domains node-nginx.local and server2.node-nginx.local and redirect them to the appropriate ports where the actual servers are hosted.

We'll also use NGINX to implement HTTPS instead of implementing it in the node servers.

The Servers

Two servers server.js and server2.js runs on port 3000 and 3001 on the same machine respectively. They are run using the commands:

node server.js
node server2.js

The Setup

Two vhost conf files are created and are enabled in NGINX.

File: node-nginx-1-443.conf

server {
    listen 443 ssl;

    server_name node-nginx.local;

    ssl_certificate /root/certs/server/server.crt;
    ssl_certificate_key /root/certs/server/server.key;

    location / {
        proxy_pass http://localhost:3000;
        proxy_http_version 1.1;
        proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
        proxy_set_header Connection 'upgrade';
        proxy_set_header Host $host;
        proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
        proxy_cache_bypass $http_upgrade;
    }

    error_log /var/log/nginx/server.error.log;
}

File node-nginx-2-443.conf

server {
    listen 443 ssl;

    server_name server2.node-nginx.local;

    ssl_certificate /root/certs/server/server.crt;
    ssl_certificate_key /root/certs/server/server.key;

    location / {
        proxy_pass http://localhost:3001;
        proxy_http_version 1.1;
        proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
        proxy_set_header Connection 'upgrade';
        proxy_set_header Host $host;
        proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
        proxy_cache_bypass $http_upgrade;
    }

    error_log /var/log/nginx/server.error.log;
}

For port 80, we'll use the conf node-nginx-80.conf to redirect requests to https.

File node-nginx-80.conf

server {
	listen 80 default_server;
	listen [::]:80 default_server;
	server_name _;
	return 301 https://$host$request_uri;
}

To simulate the domains, add the following to your hosts file:

192.168.13.1    node-nginx.local
192.168.13.1    server2.node-nginx.local

Accessing https://node-nginx.local will return: Hi, I\'m index from server 1!

Accessing https://server2.node-nginx.local will return: Hi, I\'m server 2 residing in the same server as server 1 :)