Serve frontend projects on macOS using an nginx Docker container

[Gill, Avtar]

Hi all,

You can use the following steps on macOS to serve a directory tree, as an alternative to using MAMP or managing a web server manually:

1. Pick a location in your filesystem that is going to be served by nginx, e.g. /Users/avtar/Projects

2. Select an unused port on your computer, e.g. 9999

3. Install Docker for Mac https://download.docker.com/mac/stable/Docker.dmg

4. Download and start a fork [1] of the official nginx Docker image:

docker run -d \
--name web-server \
-v /Users/avtar/Projects:/usr/share/nginx/html:ro \
-p 9999:80 \
--restart always \
jrelva/nginx-autoindex

5. Visit http://localhost:9999/

The container will start automatically when your computer boots up.

Avtar


[1] A fork of the official nginx image is being used because it modifies the nginx config to enable autoindexing of directories https://bitbucket.org/jrelva/docker-nginx-index/raw/505d6a2f9fad1b63c4bf348b2635257ee9ced9d5/Dockerfile