docker-node-nginx-alpine

Dockerfile to build an image with Nginx and Node (npm and yarn) on Alpine Linux

Useful for deploying frontend services configurable by environment variables (runtime).

You can do something like:

FROM ppdeassis/node-nginx-alpine:latest

# lets install dependencies
WORKDIR /app
COPY . .
RUN rm -rf node_modules
RUN yarn install
RUN yarn cache clean

# starting: build the app (using env vars), update nginx conf and start nginx
CMD /bin/sh ./bin/docker-cmd.sh

Add a copy of bin/docker-cmd.sh to your project and customize it. And a copy of config/nginx.default.conf and customize it too.

With this, you can configure something like API_URL as an environment variable - at service runtime - making the images reusable with the tradeoff of being bigger (file size).

Building the image

docker build --tag node-nginx-alpine .

Running as a simple container

docker run -it --rm --publish 80:80 --name node-nginx-alpine node-nginx-alpine:latest

Alternative

Docker multi-stage builds, which requires a new build for every configuration (like API_URL). Check this references for more details:

• https://docs.docker.com/engine/userguide/eng-image/multistage-build/#use-multi-stage-builds
• https://blog.alexellis.io/mutli-stage-docker-builds/
• https://github.com/docker/compose/issues/1837#issuecomment-316896858

A sample Dockerfile for multi-stage build:

# builder container
#   - builds the frontend app (Vue, React, Webpack, ...)

# Use an official node image
FROM node:9-alpine AS builder

# Reads args and use them to configure the build, setting
# them as env vars
ARG NODE_ENV
ARG API_URL

ENV NODE_ENV $NODE_ENV
ENV API_URL $API_URL

WORKDIR /app

# Install dependencies
COPY . .
RUN rm -rf node_modules
RUN yarn install
RUN yarn cache clean

RUN yarn run build


# ---


# runner container
#  - nginx, to serve static built Vue app

# Use an official nginx image
FROM nginx:1.13-alpine

# COPY dist from builder container to nginx html dir
COPY --from=builder /app/dist /usr/share/nginx/html

COPY config/nginx.default.conf /etc/nginx/conf.d/default.conf

EXPOSE 80

# No need for CMD. It'll fallback to nginx image's one, which

You can build it with something like:

docker build --build-arg NODE_ENV=development --build-arg API_URL=https://api.example.com