How to deploy a Node.js WebSocket server to Amazon Elastic Beanstalk?

Question

Using the Elastic Beanstalk web console, I\'ve launched a new Web Server 1.0 environment with:

• Predefined configuration: Node.js, 64bit Amazon Linux 2014.09 v1

Answer 1

Alright, after quite a bit or searching, I found a solution that works without changing anything to the ELB and without setting the proxy to none (I use nginx).

All you need is this:

• In the root of your project, create the .ebextensions directory (if it doesn't already exist)
• Create a file in there, I called mine 01_nginx.config

• In this file, put the following code: container_commands:

  01_nginx_websockets:
      command: |
          sed -i '/\s*proxy_set_header\s*Connection/c \
          proxy_read_timeout 36000s; \
          proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade; \
          proxy_set_header Connection "upgrade"; \
          ' /tmp/deployment/config/#etc#nginx#conf.d#00_elastic_beanstalk_proxy.conf
  

Deploy your code to elastic beanstalk and enjoy websockets connecting!

PS: You don't really need the proxy_read_timeout property set, I just use that for my own. Also, it doesn't seem to do much so, I'll keep looking.