How to configure Nginx with Docker to run Node and Mongo in the correct way

Question

I'm building a project in Node Mongo and using Docker plus Nginx to run all on my local machine MacBook pro-Catalina. I have several issues I'm unable to fix on my own and I don't know how to configure Nginx and Docker to make all work correctly. At the end of the post will be shown my Dockerfile, Docker compose and Nginx.

1. The Node container is not able to connect to the Mongo DB with this error when I run my containers: failed to connect to server [127.0.0.1:27017] on first connect but via a GUI as compass I'm able to connect to the same URL.
2. EDIT I tried to use the name of the container and it's IP bu error failed to connect to server [wetaxitask_mongodb:27017] on first connect [Error: connect ECONNREFUSED 172.18.0.3:27017
3. The next issue is I'm getting an error of Python even tho I'm installing it on my container and the error is as shown in screenshot as I don't know how to describe:
4. When all is running whatever endpoint I'm trying to hit my response is the Nginx welcome page only so probably I did wrong the conf itself

Dockerfile:

# Developpment stage
FROM node:12.18-alpine AS base-builder
RUN apk update
RUN apk add --no-cache python make g++
RUN apk add --no-cache libc6-compat
WORKDIR /usr/src/app
COPY ["tsconfig.json", "package.json", "package-lock.json*", "npm-shrinkwrap.json*", "./"]
ADD . /usr/src/app
COPY ./.env /usr/src/app/.env
RUN npm cache clean --force
RUN npm install

# ------------------------------------------------------
# Production Build
# ------------------------------------------------------
FROM nginx:1.19.0-alpine
RUN apk add --no-cache --repository http://nl.alpinelinux.org/alpine/edge/main libuv \
    &&  apk add --update nodejs npm

WORKDIR /usr/src/app
RUN ls -l /usr/src/app/
COPY --from=0  /usr/src/app/ .
RUN rm /etc/nginx/conf.d/default.conf
RUN rm -rf /docker-entrypoint.d
COPY nginx/nginx.conf /etc/nginx/conf.d/default.conf
EXPOSE 3000
EXPOSE 80
#CMD ["nginx", "-g", "daemon off;","npm", "start"]
CMD nginx ; exec npm start

Docker compose:

version: '3.8'

services:
  wetaxitask:
    container_name: wetaxitask_api_dev
    image: wetaxitask
    restart: always
    build: .
    depends_on:
      - mongodb
      - redis
    env_file: .env
    ports:
      - 8080:80
    links:
      - redis
      - mongodb

  mongodb:
    container_name: wetaxitask_mongodb
    image: mongo:latest
    restart: always
    ports:
      - 27017:27017
    volumes:
      - ./data:/data/db
    environment:
      - MONGO_INITDB_DATABASE=wetaxitask

  redis:
    container_name: wetaxitask_redis
    image: redis:latest
    ports:
      - 6379:6379

Nginx:

server {

  listen 80;

  location / {
    root   /usr/share/nginx/html;
    index  index.html index.htm;
    try_files $uri $uri/ /index.html;
  }

  location /welcome {
    proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:3000;

  }

  error_page   500 502 503 504  /50x.html;

  location = /50x.html {
    root   /usr/share/nginx/html;
  }
}

Answer 1

Try to change the hostname from localhost(127.0.0.1) to mongodb (the name of your service defined in docker-compose). Docker dns magic will do the rest.

edit: add them to a common network in your docker compose and the containers should be able to communicate with their name as hostname in the requests

version: '3.8'

services:
  wetaxitask:
    container_name: wetaxitask_api_dev
    image: wetaxitask
    restart: always
    build: .
    depends_on:
      - mongodb
      - redis
    env_file: .env
    ports:
      - 8080:80
    links:
      - redis
      - mongodb
    networks:
      - my-network

  mongodb:
    container_name: wetaxitask_mongodb
    image: mongo:latest
    restart: always
    ports:
      - 27017:27017
    volumes:
      - ./data:/data/db
    environment:
      - MONGO_INITDB_DATABASE=wetaxitask
    networks:
      - my-network

  redis:
    container_name: wetaxitask_redis
    image: redis:latest
    ports:
      - 6379:6379
    networks:
      - my-network

networks:
  my-network:
#this should define a network called my-network with default settings