4

I'm studying Docker and how to properly publish my containers coding a very simple web application. It has only two containers, backend and frontend. I've published the source code here: https://github.com/sinayra/hello-private-world

If I run locally each node application, its works "fine" (everything is public, but this is not what I want in the end of the day). Then, I created Dockerfile for each container, to try to simulate a real application. For the frontend, I exposed the port 3000 to access from the host. However, I don't want to expose the port 3333 for the host, and, because of that, my front can't fetch the data from the back.

Here is my index.html from the frontend.

<html>
  <head>
    <title>Hello Public World</title>
  </head>
  <body>
    <h1>Message from backend:</h1>
    <p id="backend"></p>

    <script>
      const back = document.getElementById("backend");
      const url = "http://localhost:3333/"; //I tried backend:3333, but without success

      fetch(url)
        .then((resp) => resp.json()) // Transform the data into json
        .then(function (data) {
          back.innerHTML = data.message;
        });
    </script>
  </body>
</html>

Its Dockerfile:

# pull official base image
FROM node:lts

# set working directory
WORKDIR /usr/src/app

# install app dependencies
COPY package.json ./
RUN npm install

# add app
COPY . ./

EXPOSE 3000

# start app
CMD ["npm", "run", "start"]

My index.js from backend:

const express = require("express");
const app = express();
const cors = require("cors");
const port = 3333;

const allowlist = ["http://localhost:3000"];
const corsOptions = {
  origin: allowlist,
  methods: "GET",
  preflightContinue: false,
  optionsSuccessStatus: 204,
};
app.use(cors(corsOptions));

app.use(express.json());
app.get("/", (req, res) => {
  console.log("GET /");
  res.json({ message: "Hello Private World!" });
});

app.listen(port, () =>
  console.log(`Example app listening at http://localhost:${port}`)
);

Its Dockerfile:

# pull official base image
FROM node:lts

# set working directory
WORKDIR /usr/src/app

# install app dependencies
COPY package.json ./
RUN npm install

# add app
COPY . ./

#EXPOSE 3333

# start app
CMD ["npm", "run", "start"]

And the Docker compose file

version: "3.8"
services:

  backend:
    image: helloworld-private
    build:
      context: ./backend
      dockerfile: Dockerfile
    working_dir: /usr/src/app
    container_name: "express_container"
    volumes:
      - ./backend/:/usr/src/app
      - /usr/src/app/node_modules
    networks: 
      - webappnetwork
    expose:
      - "3333"

  web:
    image: helloworld-public
    build:
      context: ./web
      dockerfile: Dockerfile
    working_dir: /usr/src/app
    container_name: "liveserver_container"
    links:
      - backend
    volumes:
      - ./web/:/usr/src/app
      - /usr/src/app/node_modules
    environment:
      - PORT=3000
    networks: 
      - webappnetwork
    ports: 
      - "3000:3000"

networks:
  webappnetwork:
    driver: bridge

Is there any abstraction layer that I'm missing?

2
  • Side Note: I see what you did there with that title phrasing. ;) Sep 3, 2020 at 17:34
  • omg... I swear it was unintentional
    – Sinayra
    Sep 4, 2020 at 18:07

1 Answer 1

2

The layer that you're missing is nginx proxy. See my toy Mafia Game project here how to do it:

The missing piece in your case is nginx proxy that you use in your UI.

So what you need to do is to define some location for your api - i.e. /api. Then your proxy it via nginx - see my nginx configuration for the project above here - https://github.com/taleodor/mafia-vue/tree/master/nginx. At the same time it's highly recommended for performance to deploy static resources on the same nginx.

Use Dockerfile to define environment variables and defaults, i.e. in my project - https://github.com/taleodor/mafia-vue/blob/master/Dockerfile

Finally, you can update configuration via environment variables in your docker-compose yaml or k8s definitions.

2
  • I updated my repository with this solution and everything seems nice now. But, just one more question, what are these configurations that can be updated with environment variables in docker-compose that you suggested? Is there any guide that I could follow?
    – Sinayra
    Jul 2, 2020 at 18:50
  • You don't have to parametrize anything right away. But as you go you may notice certain things that need parametrizing - so for those things you may create env variables. Personally, I usually always parametrize host names and ports for upstreams - because name conventions may be sometimes different between local docker, docker-compose and k8s. Sometimes you will find other things later to parametrize - but no hard rules here. + Rarely, there may be more complex cases, where you can include more sophisticated templating engine if needed.
    – taleodor
    Jul 2, 2020 at 21:11

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