Guide info

Author: @fogolin
Date: 2024-03-04
Last revision: 2024-03-04

About this guide

This guide is destined for users installing the AudioBookShelf server on a Docker container and placing it under Nginx Proxy Manager routing. I've looked for it in forums and issues, but coudn't find much that helped me figure this out, so I've chatted with Quan Nguyen because of his blog post on the subject and got it to work.

Requirements

A Docker installation that runs both Nginx Proxy Manager and AudioBookShelf.

Nginx Proxy Manager

Firs, let's set up the Nginx Proxy Manager network that's going to be used to route the AudioBookShelf server to an external domain. In my case, I'm using the following compose.yml file:

version: '3.8'
services:
  app:
    image: 'jc21/nginx-proxy-manager:latest'
    restart: unless-stopped
    ports:
      - '80:80'
      - '81:81'
      - '443:443'
    volumes:
      - ./data:/data
      - ./letsencrypt:/etc/letsencrypt

This is going to create a stack with the container itself, as well as a bridge network called nginx_default. This network is going to make the communication between Nginx and other containers possible.

If you need a guide setting up Nginx Proxy Manager, I suggest you consult their documentation here. The guides are pretty comprehensive and will get you through all necessary steps to set it up, configure SSL and domains. These are necessary for the next step, setting up the AudioBookShelf container on a domain.

AudioBookShelf

To set up AudioBookShelf, I'm also using a compose.yml file, as follows:

version: "3.7"
services:
  audiobookshelf:
    container_name: audiobookshelf-app
    image: ghcr.io/advplyr/audiobookshelf:latest
    #ports:
    #  - 13378:80
    volumes:
      - /mnt/audiobookshelf/data/audiobooks:/audiobooks
      - /mnt/audiobookshelf/data/podcasts:/podcasts
      - /mnt/audiobookshelf/data/config:/config
      - /mnt/audiobookshelf/data/metadata:/metadata
    networks:
      - nginx
    restart: unless-stopped

networks:
  nginx:
    name: nginx_default
    external: true

This is just a regular docker compose file as you can find in AudioBookShelf's documentation, but instead of setting a port, we're going to leave it empty with the default port 80 (Nginx can deal with multiple containers running on port 80), and we'll add the nginx_default network we've created earlier, thus the container won't try to make a new network just for this container called audiobookshelf_defaul and will instead join this already existing one.

Obs.: make sure the folders on the volume section are correct for your installation and you can docker compose up -d these instructions.

Setting up the Proxy Host

On Nginx Proxy Manager, go to Hosts / Proxy Hosts and click Add Proxy Host. Then, on the Details tab:

Domain Names: usually we go with a subdomain, such as audiobookshelf.example.com (make sure to replace example.com with your actual domain), but if that's your only installation, you can make it a top level, with no subdomain whatsoever, it's up to your use case and what you want to do.
Scheme: http
Forward Hostname / IP: audiobookshelf-app (this is the same as the container_name property on our compose file, so if you've changed it there, make sure to use the same name here)
Forward Port: 80
Enable settings: make sure to enable Websockets Support and Block Commom Exploits
Access List: Publicly Accessible

It should look something like this:

After that, go to the SSL tab and:

SSL Certificate: select your desiredSSL certificate for the domain you're using
Enable settings: mark as selected all four options (Force SSL, HTTP/2 Supoprt, HSTS Enabled and HSTS Subdomains)