CODEWITHSUNDEEP
ruby-on-railsreactjsnginxdeploymenthttp-proxy
John Hess
John Hess

Reputation: 233

How to deploy React front end + Rails api backend with nginx, capistrano and passenger

I am deploying an app with a React front end created using create-react-app and a Rails API as the backend. I do not know much about configuring web servers and proxies so I am not sure exactly how to get it to work in production. I am deploying the app to Ubuntu on an Amazon EC2 instance. Nginx is the web server. I need to configure it so that Nginx serves the static files from the client/build directory and then any requests made to /api go to the Rails app running on port 3001. Right now Nginx is serving the index.html and the Javascript is running properly but requests to /api are not going to the right place. Any thoughts on how to configure Nginx to do this? Here is my /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default file:

server {
       listen 80 default_server;
       listen [::]:80 default_server;
       server_name mydomain.com;
       passenger_enabled on;
       rails_env    staging;
       root         /home/ubuntu/app-name/current/client/build;
       index index.html;

       location /api {
          proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:3001;
       }
}

What am I missing? How do I get the Rails app to run on port 3001 and have all requests to /api go there? Do I need a separate server block in this config?

Upvotes: 2

Views: 4397

Answers (2)

eth3rnit3
eth3rnit3

Reputation: 801

Here is my working nginx config

  map $http_upgrade $connection_upgrade {
    default upgrade;
    ''      close;
}
server {
  listen 80 default_server;
  root /home/deploy/www/sublime/current/public;
  index index.html;
  server_name domain.com;
  access_log /home/deploy/www/sublime/logs/access.log;
  error_log /home/deploy/www/sublime/logs/errors.log;
  server_name localhost;
  passenger_enabled on;
  passenger_app_env production;
location ~* ^.+\.(jpeg|gif|png|jpg) {
            proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:3000;
            proxy_http_version 1.1;
  }
  location /api {
            # Insert your public app path
            proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:3000;
            proxy_http_version 1.1;
            proxy_set_header Host $http_host;
            proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
            proxy_set_header Connection $connection_upgrade;
            proxy_buffering off;
  }
  location / {
              # First attempt to serve request as file, then
              # as directory, then fall back to displaying a 404.
              try_files $uri /index.html;
  }
}

You can use this repos to see rails configuration https://github.com/Eth3rnit3/rails-react

Upvotes: 0

Fernando Martinez Avila
Fernando Martinez Avila

Reputation: 296

I don't know if you already solved your issue and if this solution will apply to you but I think it might be useful for other people searching on this issue.

I am using Puma as the application server to run my rails 5 api.

This is the configuration file for my dev environment:

upstream app {
# Path to Puma SOCK file, here is where you make the connection to your application server
server unix:/path/to/your/puma.sock fail_timeout=0;
}
server {
listen 80;
server_name mydomain.com;

# this is where my react-app is located
root /var/www/development/ram/public/;
index index.html index.htm;

# Serve the static content (React app)
location / {
    try_files $uri /index.html =404;
}

location /api {
    # Insert your public app path
    root /your/rails-app/path/public;
    proxy_pass http://app;
    proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
    proxy_set_header Host $http_host;
    proxy_redirect off;
}

error_page 500 502 503 504 /500.html;
client_max_body_size 4G;
keepalive_timeout 10;
}

So comparing, I think your problem might be solved by adding a root directive pointing to your rails api public directory

I hope this can give you some hints on how to configure yours

Upvotes: 5

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