Nginx location to FLASK route - nginx

Question

I have 2 docker containers running. 1 is FLASK and 2 is Nginx.
This is the configuration of the Nginx location
location /search/?(.*) {
proxy_pass http://backend:8080/search/;
proxy_http_version 1.1;
proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
proxy_set_header Connection 'upgrade';
proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme;
proxy_pass_request_headers on;
}
The FLASK is running on port 8080 and the route #app.route('/search', methods=['GET']) and running with app.config['SERVER_NAME'] = 'mydomain.com'
When I try to send a GET request to "mydomain.com" (going through the NGINX) from external I get
Cannot GET /search
When I remove app.config['SERVER_NAME'] = 'mydomain.com' from the FLASK I can send GET to EXTERNAL_IP:8080 (Directly to the backend not though the NGINX).
But when I leave the app.config['SERVER_NAME'] = 'mydomain.com' and try to GET mydomain.com:8080 I get 404 Not Found
What am I missing here?
I want all requests to go though the NGINX and I want to use mydomain.com

Answer 1

I think your main mistake is that you trying to match the whole request URI including the query part while location directive (as well as the rewrite one) works with the normalized URI which doesn't include the query part at all (check the location directive documentation to find out what URI normalization is). Looks like you are also trying to use a regex while regex location should be declared using a ~ (or ~*) modifier. Nevertheless you don't need any regex locations at all for your particular case. To proxy a single API endpoint preservig the Host HTTP header value, you can try this one:
location = /search {
proxy_pass http://backend:8080;
proxy_set_header Host $http_host;
proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme;
}
You don't need to specify an URI with the proxy_pass directive since you are not changing your request URI. If your API endpoint is /search/ rather than /search, change the location accordingly. If it is an URI path prefix rather than a single API endpoint, use a prefix location /search/ { ... } instead of exact match location.