Question

How to register droplets and route to them based on URL segment

Posted on May 15, 2021
DigitalOcean Droplets Networking
Asked by Padelgo TV

Hi,

We’re looking for a solution where we can register an IP (Droplet) and then route to this IP based on URL segment.

The process would be like this:

Droplet is created through the API and registers itself with the routing-service based on an arbitrary ID.
The user access the Droplet through an address like https://my.service.org/<arbitrary_id> which routes to the correct Droplet based on the arbitrary_id.
When destroyed the Droplet unregisters with the service.

Is this possible through something like a reverse proxy?

Thanks!

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Bobby Iliev

Site Moderator

• May 20, 2021

Accepted Answer

Hi there,

Yes this would be doable with a reverse proxy setup with Nginx. The Nginx server block configuration will look something like this:

server {
    listen 80;
    server_name your_domain.com www.your_domain.com;

    location /arbitrary_id_1 {
        proxy_pass http://droplet_ip;
        proxy_set_header Host $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;
    }

    location /arbitrary_id_2 {
        proxy_pass http://droplet_ip;
        proxy_set_header Host $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;
    }
}

For more information I could suggest this tutorial here:

https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-configure-nginx-as-a-web-server-and-reverse-proxy-for-apache-on-one-ubuntu-18-04-server

Hope that this helps! Regards, Bobby