Hostname to docker containers mapping? - windows

Question

When the Apache is installed directly on the host, I add an internal hostname in "C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts" and using virtual host to easily access different projects locally say: http://foo.test and http://bar.test.
Using the docker container for each project I can access the project by assigning a host port in the docker-compose file.
I hope that docker may have some internal tools to achieve access via hostname to containers.
Using a reverse proxy can be a solution as described in these relatively old but brilliant articles.
https://www.alexecollins.com/developing-with-docker-proxy-container/
http://jasonwilder.com/blog/2014/03/25/automated-nginx-reverse-proxy-for-docker/
But because I believe this is a very common development requirement, I hope Docker has something builtin to address it.

Answer 1

My approach to this problem is the following. Consider I have container A and B both running a webserver. I simply add a reverse proxy on my local machine which looks at the hostname and then proxies to the respective containers.
But instead of proxying through the hard-coded ip addresses, I proxy through the local ports. So instead of binding both your containers to port 80, bind them to a random local port (e.g., 4041) and proxy over that. That way you decouple the container IP from your host.
My nginx file looks like this then:
server {
server_name example.com # Add <host lan ip> example.com to your /etc/hosts file
location / {
proxy_set_header Host $host;
proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
proxy_http_version 1.1;
proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade; # These two lines ensure that the
proxy_set_header Connection "Upgrade"; # a WebSocket is used
proxy_pass http://localhost:4041/;
}
<snip>
Adding multiple containers then just means you have to edit 1 nginx proxy file, and bind a port to your local machine. No coupling between Docker ip's and your local hosts file.