nginx-generator

Easy simple way to create Nginx vhost files for fairly simple sites, such as a proxy to a Node.js server, a redirect from one domain to another, serving a static site or setting up a config to serve multiple static sites from one directory.

Synopsis

To install:

$ npm install -g nginx-generator

To generate a simple redirect from www.chilts.org to chilts.org, just do:

$ nginx-generator \
      --name org-chilts-www \
      --domain www.chilts.org \
      --type redirect \
      --var to=chilts.org \
      /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/org-chilts-www

Then reload Nginx

$ sudo service nginx reload

Your vars can also be read from a JSON file, such as this:

$ echo '{"to":"chilts.org"}' > vars.json
$ nginx-generator \
      --name org-chilts-www \
      --domain www.chilts.org \
      --type redirect \
      --data vars.json \
      /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/org-chilts-www

Proxy

To generate a proxy that will forward requests elsewhere, just pass the usual three --name, --domain and --type then pass both host and port as --var variables:

$ nginx-generator \
      --name org-chilts \
      --domain chilts.org \
      --type proxy \
      --var host=localhost \
      --var port=8000 \
      /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/org-chilts

Static Site

To generate a vhost that will serve a static site, just pass the usual three --name, --domain and --type then pass dir as a --var:

$ nginx-generator \
      --name org-chilts-static \
      --domain static-chilts.org \
      --type static \
      --var dir=/home/chilts/htdocs \
      /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/org-chilts-static

Redirect

To generate a redirect, just pass the usual three --name, --domain and --type then pass to as a --var:

$ nginx-generator \
      --name org-chilts-www \
      --domain www.chilts.org \
      --type redirect \
      --var to=chilts.org \
      /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/org-chilts-www

Catchall (for multiple static sites)

To generate a catchall for multiple static sites, create a directory which will hold all of the sites, then create a directory for each site, named after the host it will serve. For example, this will serve example.com, chilts.org and nodejs.nz:

$ mkdir /var/lib/sites
$ mkdir /var/lib/sites/example.com
$ mkdir /var/lib/sites/chilts.org
$ mkdir /var/lib/sites/nodejs.nz

Then, create this special vhost config:

$ nginx-generator \
      --name vhost \
      --domain _ \
      --type vhost \
      --var dir=/var/lib/sites \
      /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/vhost

Roadmap

• add ability to set and define config for basic auth for any site
• add ability to make a site serve over https with config for certs

Other Nginx Packages

There are some other Nginx packages out there such as:

• https://www.npmjs.org/package/nginx-vhosts
• https://www.npmjs.org/package/ngineer
• https://www.npmjs.org/package/nginx-conf
• https://www.npmjs.org/package/nodeginx

However, I didn't want to control Nginx itself like nginx-vhosts and ngineer does, especially on Debian or Ubuntu machines since upstart already does this. All I wanted to do was template in some simple vhosts in a programmatic (library or CLI program) way. Also, nginx-conf is too complicated since that's for the main Nginx config. nodeginx is closest to this package in terms of functionality.

AUTHOR

Written by Andrew Chilton:

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LICENSE

Copyright 2014 Andrew Chilton [email protected].

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at

http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.

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