how to reach another container from a dockerised nginx

Question

I have nginx in a docker container, and a nodejs webapp in another docker container. The nodejs server is reachable from the host server on port 8080.

The nginx docker c

Answer 1

Here's a best practice. Only expose port 80 outside of the host. The nodejs app can be in a private network only accessible through nginx.

version: "2"
services:
    nginx:
      ...
      ports:
        - "80:80"
      networks:
        - backbone
    nodejs:
      ...
      networks:
        - backbone
      expose: 
        - 8080

networks:
  backbone:
    driver: bridge

In your nginx.conf file, the upstream servers can be listed as nodejs:8080. The docker daemon will resolve it to the correct internal ip.