node-docker-router

node-docker-router is an experimental, automated HTTP router for Docker Container powered by Node.js. You may think this is an alternative to Traefik (HTTP reverse proxy).

In contrast to Traefik which heavily utilizes the Docker Labels for advanced routing, node-docker-router instead only uses the container name. Making it possible to reroute a container without having to restart it, just as simple as renaming the container name.

How does it work?

node-docker-router is built around a simple concept: It automatically forwards HTTP requests to the associated Container based on its Host/Domain name. This utilizes the Docker Engine API to get the container IP address, to then cache it to prevent repeated lookups.

In simple words, If the domain name is example.com, then the container name should be example_com. The underscore character was chosen simply because it's one of those special characters that won't be urlencoded, it also plays well as a container name.

  https://example.com
           |
           |
           v

  Host: example.com:443
 ______________________
|                      |        Container Name
|  node-docker-router  |        
|                      |
|    listen:target     |        example_com:80
|       443:80         | ---->  172.18.0.3 :80
|        80:80         |
|                      |        another_com:80
|______________________|        172.18.0.4 :80

Features

• No need to restart service if domain/container name is changed (docker rename command doesn't require restart!)
• Multiple listen and target ports
• Built-in Simple HTML cache mechanism
• Built with Stream in mind to download/stream large files without having to load the entire file into memory

node-docker-router also supports manual routing by modifying the routes.js file. It's like using the node-docker-router as a regular HTTP reverse proxy.

Basic Configuration

Copy the default config/.env file to this directory if you don't have one:

cp config/.env .

Then simply edit it before running sh run.sh or executing it via the docker-compose command.

Usage

There are many ways to run this. The entry point is run.sh:

sh run.sh

Or if you prefer to run this in a container too (as a containerized app):

cd build/
docker-compose build
docker-compose up -d

Then verify if it works:

curl -H "Host: mydomain" http://localhost

License

MIT