Nginx-proxy: Support for stream module

[sjawhar]

I wanted to float an idea: support for streaming connections. I put together a quick proof of concept on the stream branch of this fork. Run docker-compose -f docker-compose-separate-containers.yml up -d --build to see connections proxied to both the whoami service and a mongo service. You can grab a mongo admin UI and connect to it using mongo.local:27017.

So, what do people think? Is there a valuable use case for this?

Downsides:

• You can't have different VIRTUAL_HOSTS listening on the same port, since there's no hostname resolution like with HTTP.

Work left:

• Get it working when docker-gen and nginx are running in the same container
• Block http access over the streaming port
• Finish stream.tmpl
• Tests

[clobber88]

Would this allow me to run OpenVPN behind nginx-proxy?

[aackerman]

I'm very interested in this functionality, but I think this would require deviating from the official nginx docker image. They don't seem to provide the stream modules from the official images.

[sjawhar]

Yes, it requires building on the official nginx image. You can see the Dockerfile I put together to do that here: https://github.com/sjawhar/nginx-proxy/blob/stream/Dockerfile.nginx

My main concern, as the person who opened this issue and made the fork, is that I'm not sure it's even a good idea to start with. Maybe it's better to just use HAProxy or something.

Also, since you can't have different VIRTUAL_HOSTS on the same port... I'm struggling to remember why I started this. :)

[cgraefe]

I would find this useful. I'm using the Let's Encrypt companion container to manage SSL certificates for a bunch of HTTP hosts. Now I would like to put my MQTT server behind the proxy and have its certificate renewed automatically.