nginx-proxy Labels¶

dnsweaver can extract hostnames from Docker containers that declare a VIRTUAL_HOST in the jwilder/nginx-proxy convention. This lets you manage DNS for services already configured to sit behind nginx-proxy without duplicating hostname config.

Enabling nginx-proxy¶

Add nginx-proxy to DNSWEAVER_SOURCES:

environment:
  - DNSWEAVER_SOURCES=nginx-proxy

You can combine it with other sources:

- DNSWEAVER_SOURCES=traefik,nginx-proxy,dnsweaver

Labels vs Environment Variables¶

Labels only — for now

Upstream nginx-proxy reads VIRTUAL_HOST from the container environment. dnsweaver currently consumes Docker labels only. Until env-var plumbing lands, you must declare VIRTUAL_HOST as a label (in addition to, or instead of, an env var) on any container you want dnsweaver to manage.

dnsweaver recognises two label keys:

Label	Notes
`VIRTUAL_HOST`	Literal jwilder env-var name used as a Docker label key
`com.nginx-proxy.virtual_host`	Canonical reverse-DNS label form

Either form works; use whichever fits your labelling conventions.

Label Format¶

Single hostname¶

labels:
  VIRTUAL_HOST: app.example.com

Multiple hostnames¶

Comma-separated — same syntax as upstream nginx-proxy:

labels:
  VIRTUAL_HOST: app.example.com,www.example.com

Whitespace around the commas is tolerated.

Canonical label form¶

labels:
  com.nginx-proxy.virtual_host: app.example.com

If both labels are present, their hostnames are merged and deduplicated.

Supported Record Types¶

VIRTUAL_HOST declares hostnames only. dnsweaver pairs each hostname with the default record type for the matching provider (typically A). For per-hostname record overrides, combine this source with native dnsweaver labels.

Caveats¶

No env-var extraction. If you run upstream jwilder/nginx-proxy and rely on -e VIRTUAL_HOST=… without a matching label, dnsweaver cannot see the hostname.
No nginx.conf parsing. Only Docker labels are read; static nginx configs are out of scope.
No VIRTUAL_PORT or VIRTUAL_PATH handling. dnsweaver only cares about hostnames; upstream/path routing belongs to nginx-proxy itself.