Docker nginx routing to API in other container - docker

Question

i am going crazy not figuring this out..
I have a docker network created named isolated-network, and i have an nginx server and an API created in the network. Nginx on port 80 is exposed to the host so i can access it, but the API isnt. I know i could expose the API to the host too, but i'd like for it to be isolated and only accessible through nginx through say /api.
I have configured the Nginx at /api to route to http://my-api:8000, however i get 404 not found in return when accessing http://locahost/api. If i do 'docker exec -it nginx sh' and try to curl the same route http://my-api:8000 i get the expected response.
Is what i'm trying even possible? I have not found any example trying to do the same. If i can't route to http://my-api:8000, can i atleast send the API request to it and receive the response?

Answer 1

in below i have an example that nginx will route traffic to php-fpm container
docker file:
FROM php:8.1-fpm
USER root
RUN mkdir -p /var/www/ && mkdir -p /home/www/.composer && chown www:www /var/www/html && chown www:www /home/www/.composer
#groupadd -g 1000 www && useradd -ms /bin/bash -G www -g 1000 www &&
RUN usermod -aG sudo www
RUN chown -R www /var/www
USER root
EXPOSE 9000
CMD ["php-fpm"]
docker compose file:
version: "3"
services:
webserver:
image: nginx:1.21.6-alpine
container_name: webserver
restart: unless-stopped
ports:
- "80:80"
volumes:
- ./configfiles/nginx/conf-fpm:/etc/nginx/conf.d
php-fpm:
image: php:8.1-fpm
working_dir: /var/www
stdin_open: true
tty: true
build:
context: ./configfiles/php-fpm
dockerfile: Dockerfile
volumes:
- ./src:/var/www
nginx config file
server {
listen 80;
index index.php index.html;
error_log /var/log/nginx/error.log;
access_log /var/log/nginx/access.log;
root /var/www/public;
proxy_read_timeout 3600;
proxy_connect_timeout 3600;
proxy_send_timeout 3600;
location ~ \.php$ {
try_files $uri =404;
fastcgi_split_path_info ^(.+\.php)(/.+)$;
fastcgi_pass php-fpm:9000;
fastcgi_read_timeout 3600;
fastcgi_index index.php;
include fastcgi_params;
fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
fastcgi_param PATH_INFO $fastcgi_path_info;
}
location / {
try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$query_string;
gzip_static on;
}
}