API DEVELOPMENT
Host a Reverse Proxy in Seconds
Matt Voget
August 2, 2024 | 1 min read
Need a publicly accessible reverse proxy? Want to skip testing with localhost?
Setting up the Proxy
First let’s configure a simple reverse proxy with nginx using the following
nginx.confserver {listen 80;location / {proxy_pass "https://httpbin.org/";}}
All requests sent to this server will proxy out to httpbin.org — a nice tool for developing and testing this proxy with downstream servers/APIs.
Next, we’ll define a simple
DockerfileFROM nginx:latestCOPY nginx.conf /etc/nginx/conf.d/default.confEXPOSE 80
Hosting the Proxy with Blackbird
After installing the Blackbird CLI, we can publicly host this reverse proxy with a Blackbird deployment:
blackbird deployment create proxy -d Dockerfile -c .✔ input validated✔ environment is ready✔ no matching mock instance found✔ image successfully built✔ image successfully pushed✔ checking existing deployments✔ creating application for deployment✔ application deployment created+-------+------------+----------+---------------------------------------------------------+| NAME | TYPE | STATUS | URL |+-------+------------+----------+---------------------------------------------------------+| proxy | deployment | Ready | https://matts-org-a0696.blackbird-relay.a8r.io/proxy/ |+-------+------------+----------+---------------------------------------------------------+
Blackbird gave us a public host that is running our reverse proxy in a container - let’s try it out:
curl --request POST -d '{"message":"hello"}' \https://matts-org-a0696.blackbird-relay.a8r.io/proxy/post{"args": {},"data": "{\"message\":\"hello\"}","files": {},"form": {},"headers": {"Accept": "*/*","Content-Length": "19","Content-Type": "application/json","Host": "httpbin.org","User-Agent": "curl/8.6.0"},"json": {"message": "hello"},"url": "https://httpbin.org/post"}
Just like that, our reverse proxy is live and hosted 🚀
Happy proxying!