REMUX - request demultiplexer

Remux is an nginx reverse-proxy daemon designed for routing http requests to different docker service backends.

Why?

When we started changing our technologies into microservices, lots of problems startd:

• Multi services requires multi (sub)domains (and multi SSL certs)
• Harder local development as we have to configure one port for each service and somehow link them together.
• CORS. allowing * is unsecure while using specefic domain names requires many config changes in different dev envs. or even imagine what if a UI developer whants to simply use staging api server and just focus on developing UI ? :))
• Service discovery problmes with solutins like nginx-proxy for docker SWARM mode (#520).
• Typically we don't want to configure or expose our real service IPs.

The solution

This image is just a simple pre-configured nginx proxy that can be customized using environment variables and routes requests to where they sh ould go. (It is recommanded using REMUX behind nginx-proxy)

+------------+                                   +--------------------------------+
|            |                                   |                                |
|            +-----/gallery/photos-------------->+  public service                |
|            |                                   |                                |
|            |                                   |                       WWW Node |
|            |                                   |                                |
|            |                                   |                                |
| REMUX      +-----/admin/dashboard------------->+  admin service                 |
| Daemon     |                                   |                                |                       
|            |                                   +--------------------------------+
|            |                                   +--------------------------------+
|            |                                   |                                |
|            +-----/api/v1/users---------------->+  api service          API Node |
|            |                                   |                                |
|            |                                   +--------------------------------+
|            |                                   +--------------------------------+
|            |                                   |                                |
|            +-----/cdn/photos/img1.jpg--------->+  cdn service          CDN Node |
|Manager Node|                                   |                                |
+------------+                                   +--------------------------------+

Docker image

Pre built docker image is published at baninan/remux.

docker-compose example

version: '3'
services:

 remux:
    image: banian/remux
    deploy:
           placement:
                constraints:
                    - node.hostname==YOUR_HOST_NAME
    environment:
      - VIRTUAL_HOST=mysubdomain.local
      - VIRTUAL_PORT=80
      - API_URL=myservice_api:3000
      - WEB_URL=myservice_web:3001
      - ADMIN_URL=myservice_admin:3002
      - CDN_URL=myservice_cdn:9000

 api:
    image: API_IMAGE_NAME

 web:
    image: WEB_IMAGE_NAME

 admin:
    image: ADMIN_IMAGE_NAME
 
 cdn:
    image: CDN_IMAGE_NAME

Make sure to replace the API_IMAGE_NAME, WEB_IMAGE_NAME, ADMIN_IMAGE_NAME and CDN_IMAGE_NAME with your own service image names.

Environment variables & routes

You don't have to configure all of variables, they will be replaced by next one if not set.

Route	Variable usage priority
/api	API_URL, WEB_URL, ADMIN_URL
/admin	ADMIN_URL, WEB_URL, API_URL
/	WEB_URL, ADMIN_URL, API_URL
/cdn	CDN_URL, WEB_URL, ADMIN_URL, API_URL

FAQ

Can i change hardcoded /api,... to my custom one?

NO!

Funny story

When i was commiting initial README file, it was accidentally deleted! Thanks to linux super power i easily recovered it using: pv /dev/sda | grep -a -C 500 '/admin/dashboard' :))

LICENSE

MIT