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@joemccann
Created October 25, 2010 02:06
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Set up nginx as a reverse proxy to node.js.

The idea is to have nginx installed and node installed. I will extend this gist to include how to install those as well, but at the moment, the following assumes you have nginx 0.7.62 and node 0.2.3 installed on a Linux distro (I used Ubuntu).

In a nutshell,

  1. nginx is used to serve static files (css, js, images, etc.)
  2. node serves all the "dynamic" stuff.

So for example, www.foo.com request comes and your css, js, and images get served thru nginx while everything else (the request for say index.html or "/") gets served through node.

  1. nginx listens on port 80.
  2. node listens on port 8124 (for this example only. you can change this port for your node app).

So in your /etc/nginx/sites-available/default modify your location / stanza and add the second stanza of this code block:

location / { proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:8124; #this is the ip:port where your node app runs root /var/www/yoursitename; expires 30d; #uncomment this is you want to name an index file: #index index.php index.html; access_log off; }
    location ~* ^.+\.(jpg|jpeg|gif|png|ico|css|zip|tgz|gz|rar|bz2|pdf|txt|tar|wav|bmp|rtf|js|flv|swf|html|htm)$ {
        root   /var/www/yoursitename/public;
    }

Note: I did not change the /etc/nginx/nginx.conf file. It is still the default nginx.conf from the nginx installation.

Now, restart nginx.

/etc/init.d/nginx restart

(Re)start your node app.

node /path/to/your/node/app.js

Navigate to your site and verify.

Enjoy blazing fast static files and blazing fast dynamic content.

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ghost commented Jan 18, 2015

Same problem here @cybermarkus1

@alcreates
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Amazing! Was up all night trying to figure this out. Thanks.

@Noel-A-Gonzalez
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Hello!
I have several applications in node.js, and I want to run with nginx to redirect me. I can not achieve it is to manage the routing of express good.

I have the following in node:

/ * GET home page. * /
router.get ( '/', function (req, res, next) {
  res.render ( 'index.html');
});

/ * GET dashboard * /
router.get ( '/ timelife', function (req, res, next) {
    res.render ( 'admin / timeLife.html');
});

and my nginx configuration is as follows:
location / editor / {
        proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $ remote_addr;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $ proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
        Host proxy_set_header $ HTTP_HOST;
        proxy_set_header X-NginX-Proxy true;
        PROXY_PASS http: //190.28.3615: 3001 /;

        proxy_redirect off;
        proxy_http_version 1.1;
        Upgrade proxy_set_header $ http_upgrade;
        proxy_set_header Connection "upgrade";

        proxy_redirect off;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $ scheme;
        proxy_cache_key sfs $ request_uri $ scheme;
    }

when I try to access http://mydomain.com/editor/, I redirected the product http://mydomain.com/login/ and shows me 404 error.

Any idea how to fix this?

@quique123
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Ive set it up on a raspberry pi2. The site is at:

www/subdomain.domain.com/aism/index.html && the nodejs app is here too

from another computer on the network I can see the index.html but the app doesnt work. The app works fine remotely thru the router when on http:

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