Nginx+Docker with autoreload on config changes for local development

_README.md

Nginx + Docker with autoreload

We build a nginx container that uses inotifywait to check for nginx.conf changes.
This allows us to mount the config to the container for easy editing.
Every time you hit save, watcher.sh calls nginx -s reload.

To get started:

make build
make start

Dockerfile

FROM nginx
COPY nginx.conf /etc/nginx/nginx.conf

RUN apt-get update && apt-get install -y inotify-tools
COPY watcher.sh /watcher.sh
RUN chmod +x /watcher.sh

CMD ["/watcher.sh"]

Makefile

IMAGE_NAME="org/dev-nginx"
CONTAINER_NAME="org-dev-nginx"

# "public API"

.PHONY: start
start:
	docker run -it --rm \
	--name $(CONTAINER_NAME) -p 8080:80 \
	-v $(PWD)/nginx.conf:/etc/nginx/nginx.conf \
	$(IMAGE_NAME)

.PHONY: clean
clean: stop rm

.PHONY: validate
validate:
	docker run --rm -t -a stdout \
	-v $(PWD)/nginx.conf:/etc/nginx/nginx.conf:ro \
	nginx:latest \
	nginx -c /etc/nginx/nginx.conf -t

.PHONY: build
build:
	docker build -t $(IMAGE_NAME) .

.PHONY: run
run:
	docker run --name $(CONTAINER_NAME) -p 8080:80 -d $(IMAGE_NAME)

.PHONY: stop
stop:
	docker stop $(CONTAINER_NAME)

.PHONY: rm
rm:
	docker rm $(CONTAINER_NAME)

.PHONY: rmi
rmi:
	docker rmi $(IMAGE_NAME)

nginx.conf

user nginx;
worker_processes 1;
error_log /var/log/nginx/error.log debug;
pid       /var/run/nginx.pid;

events {
  worker_connections  1024;
}

http {
  include      /etc/nginx/mime.types;
  default_type application/octet-stream;
  log_format  main '$remote_addr - $remote_user [$time_local] "$request" '
                   '$status $body_bytes_sent "$http_referer" '
                   '"$http_user_agent" "$http_x_forwarded_for"';
  access_log /var/log/nginx/access.log  main;
  keepalive_timeout 65;
  sendfile on;
  gzip on;

  #
  # Backends
  #

  upstream backend {
    server localhost:8000;
  }

  #
  # Routing
  #

  server {
  server_name myhost default_server;
    location / {
      proxy_pass http://sumpli-core;
      proxy_set_header Host app.sumpli.com;
      proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $remote_addr;
      proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
    }
  }
}

watcher.sh

#!/bin/bash

nginx_watch () {
  while inotifywait -e modify /etc/nginx/nginx.conf; do
      echo "Watcher: /etc/nginx/nginx.conf changed, reloading (nginx -s reload) ..."
      nginx -s reload
  done
}

nginx_watch &

nginx -g "daemon off;"