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I tried to setup Caddy last year as a reverse proxy for all paths matching "/backend", and serve the rest as static files from a directory. I had to give up, because the documentation was not good enough.

I tried the JSON config format that seems to be the recommended format, but most examples on Google use the old format. To make it even more complicated the official documentation mentions configuration options, without informing that it requires plugins that is not necessarily installed on Ubuntu. Apparently they just assume that you will compile it from scratch with all options included. Lots of time was wasted before I found a casual mention of it in some discussion forum (maybe stack overflow, don't remember). I just wanted the path to be rewritten to remove the "/backend" path before proxying it to the service. I guess that is uncommon for a reverse proxy, and have to be placed in a separate module

I may appear overly critical, but I really spent a lot of time and made an honest attempt

I'll go back to nginx. Setting up let's encrypt requires some additional steps, but at least it's well documented and can be found in Google searches if necessary



Huh, sorry that it was that difficult. Based on what you wrote, this should suffice:

    example.com
    
    root /etc/www
    reverse_proxy /backend/* 127.0.0.1:8080
    file_server


It seems simple, but I used the JSON format which seems to add a lot of complexity (basically serialized version of objects)

I also had to install a separate module just to get a decent access log...

Could be my fault for going too far down a wrong path, but it could also be a sign of poor documentation


I found my last attempt here (before I gave up). I also spent a lot of time getting the basic logs working, by installing modules that wasn't part of the standard distribution

    {
      "logging": {
        "logs": {
          "default": {
            "level": "INFO",
            "encoder": {
              "format": "transform",
              "template":"{common_log}"
            },
            "writer": {
              "output": "file",
              "filename": "/var/log/caddy/access.log",
              "roll": true,
              "roll_size_mb": 5,
              "roll_gzip": true,
              "roll_local_time": true,
              "roll_keep": 5,
              "roll_keep_days": 7
            }
          },
          "dev_access": {
            "level": "INFO",
            "encoder": {
              "format": "transform",
              "template":"{common_log}"
            },
            "writer": {
              "output": "file",
              "filename": "/var/log/caddy/dev_access.log",
              "roll": true,
              "roll_size_mb": 5,
              "roll_gzip": true,
              "roll_local_time": true,
              "roll_keep": 5,
              "roll_keep_days": 7
            }
          },
          "errors": {
            "level": "ERROR",
            "writer": {
              "output": "file",
              "filename": "/var/log/caddy/error.log"
            }
          }
        }
      },
      "apps": {
        "http": {
          "servers": {
            "srv0": {
              "listen": [":443"],
              "logs": {
                "default_logger_name": "dev_access"
              },
              "routes": [
                {
                  "match": [
                    {
                      "host": ["<redacted>"],
                      "path": ["/backend/*"]
                    }
                  ],
                  "handle": [
                    {
                      "handler": "subroute",
                      "routes": [
                        {
                          "handle": [
                            {
                              "handler": "rewrite",
                              "strip_path_prefix": "/backend"
                            }
                          ]
                        },
                        {
                          "handle": [
                            {
                              "handler": "reverse_proxy",
                              "upstreams": [
                                {
                                  "dial": "localhost:8080"
                                }
                              ]
                            }
                          ]
                        }
                      ]
                    }
                  ]
                },
                {
                  "match": [
                    {
                      "host": ["<redacted>"]
                    },
                    {
                      "file": {
                        "try_files": ["{path}", "/index.html"]
                      }
                    }
                  ],
                  "handle": [
                    {
                      "handler": "file_server",
                      "pass_thru": true,
                      "root": "/home/server/web/dist"
                    }
                  ]
                },
                {
                  "match": [
                    {
                      "host": ["<redacted>"]
                    }
                  ],
                  "handle": [
                    {
                      "handler": "rewrite",
                      "uri": "/index.html"
                    }
                  ]
                }
              ]
            }
          }
        }
      }
    }


> I had to give up, because the documentation was not good enough.

I had the same experience. And also somewhat bothered me that even a very basic and common functionality like rate limiting is not built-in.


Sounds like last example here?

https://caddyserver.com/docs/caddyfile/directives/handle_pat...




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