nginx-proxy sets up a container which invokes docker-gen on startup, generating a reverse proxy configs for nginx and runs nginx.

Note: Unlike jwilder/ngnix-proxy, it does not run docker-gen as a service or reload nginx

See Automated Nginx Reverse Proxy for Docker for why you might want to use this.

To run it:

1. Start any containers you want proxied with an env var VIRTUAL_HOST=subdomain.youdomain.com

    $ docker run -e VIRTUAL_HOST=foo.bar.com  ...
   

2. Start the proxy

    $ docker run -d -p 80:80 -v /var/run/docker.sock:/tmp/docker.sock:ro jwilder/nginx-proxy
   

The containers being proxied must expose the port to be proxied, either by using the EXPOSE directive in their Dockerfile or by using the --expose flag to docker run or docker create.

Provided your DNS is setup to forward foo.bar.com to the a host running nginx-proxy, the request will be routed to a container with the VIRTUAL_HOST env var set.

If your container exposes multiple ports, nginx-proxy will default to the service running on port 80. If you need to specify a different port, you can set a VIRTUAL_PORT env var to select a different one. If your container only exposes one port and it has a VIRTUAL_HOST env var set, that port will be selected.