The Wonders of Caddyfile

date
Jan 1, 2018
slug
caddyfile
status
Published
tags
Tech
summary
type
Post
It is incredibly easy to do a lot of things with Caddy server. We will explore reverse proxy, wildcard HTTPS cert and catch-all www redirection. Then we will see how to combine them together to do powerful stuff in one short Caddyfile.

Reverse Proxy

To reverse proxy a subdomain to docker container, all you need is:
 www.subdomain.augusteo.com {
     proxy / wordpress:8888 {
         transparent
     }
 }
With this, the subdomain will point to the wordpress container’s port 8888. If you aren’t using docker and just running things on localhost, you could replace that with localhost:3000 or whatever port you are running the app from.

Wildcard HTTPS

I’m hosting my blog on Vultr and uses its DNS, so I could use it for wildcard cert.
hugo.augusteo.com {
     root /site/augusteocom
     gzip
	   tls {
        dns vultr
     }
 }
This config will serve augusteo.com from the root path and initialise wildcard HTTP TLS using the Vultr DNS. To enable this, you need to either:
  1. download caddy binary with Vultr plugin

Redirect all non-www to www

Its very easy to redirect one domain with the redir keyword, but its a bit tricky to do it for all subdomain at once:
 http://*.augusteo.com, https://*.augusteo.com {
     redir {
         if {host} not_starts_with www
         / https://www.{label1}.augusteo.com{uri}
     }
     gzip
     tls {
         dns vultr
     }
 }
We could use the not_starts_with function to check if non-www domain is being requested, then do 301 redirection to www version of it. We can also specify the tls here so all the subdomain get encrypted with the wildcard.

Combining them all

Now this is the current Caddyfile that I’m using on this server:
 # Main domain
 http://augusteo.com, https://augusteo.com {
     redir {
         if {host} not_starts_with www
         / https://hugo.augusteo.com{uri}
     }
     tls {
         dns vultr
     }
 }

 hugo.augusteo.com {
     root /site/augusteocom
     gzip
 }

 # Subdomains
 http://*.augusteo.com, https://*.augusteo.com {
     redir {
         if {host} not_starts_with www
         / https://www.{label1}.augusteo.com{uri}
     }
     gzip
     tls {
         dns vultr
     }
 }

 www.subdomain.augusteo.com {
     proxy / wordpress:8888 {
         transparent
     }
 }
This file would:
  1. redirect all non-www to www page. We had to do it twice because the subdomain . doesn’t cover the main domain.
  1. reverse proxy the subdomain to docker container
  1. use wildcard HTTP TLS cert on all domains.
To add new subdomain, we would just need to add the reverse proxy or the root path of it, e.g.:
 www.subdomain2.augusteo.com {
     proxy / rubyonrails:3000 {
         transparent
     }
 }

 www.subdomain3.augusteo.com {
     root /site/jekyllstatic
 }
Running Caddy server extremely simple compared to running Nginx and a lot faster compared to Apache. Learn it and love it.

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