Pass proxy depending on URL prefix - express

Question

I'm new to NginX and I have been trying to figure out how to do the following;
example.com forwards to the express application running on port 3000 with the purpose of serving clients.
dashboard.example.com forwards to the express application running on port 3001 with the purpose of serving administrators.
For this, I have set up the following configuration;
server {
listen 80;
listen [::]:80;
server_name example.com www.example.com dashboard.example.com;
return 302 https://$server_name$request_uri;
}
# dashboard.example.com for administrators.
server {
listen 80;
server_name dashboard.example.com;
location / {
proxy_pass http://localhost:3001;
}
}
# example.com for normal users.
server {
# SSL configuration
listen 443 ssl http2;
listen [::]:443 ssl http2;
ssl_certificate /etc/ssl/cert.pem;
ssl_certificate_key /etc/ssl/key.pem;
server_name example.com www.example.com;
location / {
proxy_pass http://localhost:3000;
}
}
The problem is that dashboard.example.com and example.com (as does www.example.com) all forward to the client server running on port 3000. How can I make dashboard.example.com forward to 3001?

Answer 1

The issue seems to be that you always redirect to https (good job!), but you only listen for SSL traffic (port 443) on the server_name example.com and www.example.com, and have no proxy configuration for ssl on the dashboard. Try something like:
server {
listen 80;
listen [::]:80;
server_name example.com www.example.com dashboard.example.com;
return 302 https://$server_name$request_uri;
}
# dashboard.example.com for administrators.
server {
# SSL configuration
listen 443 ssl http2;
listen [::]:443 ssl http2;
ssl_certificate /etc/ssl/cert.pem;
ssl_certificate_key /etc/ssl/key.pem;
server_name dashboard.example.com;
location / {
proxy_pass http://localhost:3001;
}
}
# example.com for normal users.
server {
# SSL configuration
listen 443 ssl http2;
listen [::]:443 ssl http2;
ssl_certificate /etc/ssl/cert.pem;
ssl_certificate_key /etc/ssl/key.pem;
server_name example.com www.example.com;
location / {
proxy_pass http://localhost:3000;
}
}
Let me know if re-writing the middle block works for you. If the intention is not to have https on the dashboard for administrators, you need to remove dashboard.example.com from line 4 instead.