Document: WM-027                                                 P. Webb
Category: Tutorial                                            2018.02.09

                       Using nginx and Socket.io

Abstract

   Two of my favorite web technologies, together

Body

   When pushing Socii[1] to production, I forgot how to account for the
   fact that Socket.io[2] will not work out of the box with HTTPS
   without a lil’ extra configuration.

   On your nginx server, you’ll want to edit your default file located
   at etc > nginx > sites-available. I’ll use one of my server
   blocks as an example:

   

   server {
     # removed for brevity

     location ~* \.io {
       proxy_set_header X-Real-IP        $remote_addr;
       proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For  $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
       proxy_set_header Host             $http_host;
       proxy_set_header X-NginX-Proxy    true;
       proxy_pass                        http://localhost:1234;
       proxy_redirect                    off;
       proxy_http_version                1.1;
       proxy_set_header Upgrade          $http_upgrade;
       proxy_set_header Connection       "upgrade";

       proxy_redirect                    off;
       proxy_set_header                  X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme;
       proxy_cache_key                   sfs$request_uri$scheme;
     }
   }



   The proxy_pass value will be the same as your app’s. Actually, the
   entire location directive is exactly the same, except for the opening
   location bit. So, in the section that was removed for brevity you’d
   have the same location block as above but location ~* \.io would
   be replaced with location /.

   Once you’re done editing, SSH into your server and run nginx -t to
   ensure your configuration syntax is solid. Your changes won’t be
   applied until the nginx service (or your server) restarts and if you
   configured something incorrectly, you don’t want that to happen. If
   you get a message saying the syntax is okay, run
   service nginx restart and you’re good to go!

   This is something I do once or twice a year and am stumped by so this
   blog post is serving as an external memory unit. Hope this helps you
   as well! 🕸