> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://blog.lsonline.fr/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # How to request and expose your Elasticsearch engine for your Ghost blog - URL: https://blog.lsonline.fr/2020/07/17/how-to-request-and-expose-your-elasticsearch-engine-for-your-ghost-blog/ - Published: 2020-07-17T13:07:41.000Z - Updated: 2026-01-27T18:54:19.000Z - Description: In this post, I will explain to you how to expose and use your Elastic search engine for your self-hosted Ghost blog with Docker - Author: Laurent Sittler - Tags: Getting Started, Docker, Development, Infrastructure, Ghost Blog I recently wrote a post about implement Elasticsearch to allow your readers to search in the contents of your self-hosted Ghost blog "**[Elasticsearch as search engine for your Ghost blog](https://blog.lsonline.fr/2020/07/08/elasticsearch-as-search-engine-for-your-ghost-blog/)**". In this post, I will explain to you how to expose and use your search engine. ## Expose your search endpoint with a reverse proxy Based on my previous post, the Elasticsearch endpoint has its own URL. That means, if you want to use it in a production environment, all requests must be against another public URL. Example: - The URL of your Ghost blog is: `https://blog.mydomain.com/` - The URL of your Elasticsearch server is: `https://elasticsearch.mydomain.com:9200/blog_search/post/_search` ![](https://blog.lsonline.fr/content/images/2020/07/LsOnline-elk-noproxylocation-404.jpg) ![](https://blog.lsonline.fr/content/images/2020/07/LsOnline-elk-noproxylocation-auth.jpg) Network access without reverse-proxy restriction Some [CORS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-origin%5Fresource%5Fsharing?ref=blog.lsonline.fr) security conflicts with the browsers may occur if you have another subdomain. Moreover, with a public Elasticsearch endpoint, it is possible to request all indexes of your search service. In this case, we only have `/blog_search/` and if you want to use your engine with other services, that can be considered as a security leak. Example: - If you use the URL *https://elasticsearch.mydomain.com:9200/\_search*: you can access any index of your search - If you use the URL *https://elasticsearch.mydomain.com:9200/blog\_search/\_search*: you can only access the index *blog\_search* ![](https://blog.lsonline.fr/content/images/2020/07/LsOnline-elasticsearch-proxyconfig-location.jpg) ![](https://blog.lsonline.fr/content/images/2020/07/LsOnline-elasticsearch-proxyconfig-noexternal.jpg) Network access with reverse-proxy location Expose your Elasticsearch through a reverse proxy can help you to: - Force the access to a specific index - Redirect search queries from your blog URL to your Elasticsearch server - Not directly expose your search endpoint on the internet ### Docker Nginx Proxy Thanks to the [**jwilder/nginx-proxy**](https://github.com/nginx-proxy/nginx-proxy?ref=blog.lsonline.fr) docker image, it is possible to host several docker containers on one physical server and to customize the configuration of the external access for all or per container. #### Prerequisites - A Docker [internal network](https://github.com/nginx-proxy/nginx-proxy?ref=blog.lsonline.fr#internet-vs-local-network-access) that allows connecting all containers with no external access (recommended). Example: ```bash docker network create --driver=bridge --attachable --scope=local --internal --subnet=10.1.0.0/24 no-internet ``` - A Docker network that allows access from the Internet (that can be the default one) - A folder named `vhost` that will be mapped with the `nginx-proxy` container and that will contain custom [location configurations](https://github.com/nginx-proxy/nginx-proxy?ref=blog.lsonline.fr#per-virtual%5Fhost-location-configuration) *(use a folder to store all configuration files is more flexible and maintainable than binding each configuration file)* #### Docker file With these prerequisites in mind, here is the **nginx-proxy** compose file: ```docker version: '3.7' services: ghost-nginx-proxy: image: jwilder/nginx-proxy ports: - "80:80" - "443:443" volumes: - "/var/run/docker.sock:/tmp/docker.sock:ro" - type: bind source: ./vhost target: /etc/nginx/vhost.d networks: - no-internet - default restart: always networks: default: no-internet: external: name: no-internet ``` Docker compose file for Nginx > \[info\]**Important** > > *It is important to note that the nginx container must have access to the default (internet) network and the local one (no-internet) too.* You can start the container: ```bash docker-compose -f nginx-proxy-compose.yml up -d ``` ### Virtual Host Location It is time to create your location file `myblog.mydomain.com_location` that allows to redirect all requests to your Elasticsearch server: ```ini # Search API delivered by ElasticSearch location ^~ /api/search { proxy_set_header Host $http_host; proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr; proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for; proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme; proxy_http_version 1.1; proxy_set_header Connection "Keep-Alive"; proxy_set_header Proxy-Connection "Keep-Alive"; proxy_pass http://ghost-elasticsearch:9200/blog_search/post/_search; proxy_read_timeout 600; } ``` Nginx custom location file - The file name must be named like your **Ghost blog URL** (same as the value of your VIRTUAL\_HOST docker environment variable used by your Ghost blog container) and saved into your `vhost` folder - In this case, the endpoint will be **/api/search**. That means if your blog URL is `https://myblog.mydomain.com`, your Elasticsearch endpoint will be `https://myblog.mydomain.com/api/search` - The last important thing is the `proxy_pass` that redirects all requests to your Elasticsearch and more particularly to the index of your blog search ? #### Update your Elastic stack file Based on my post [*Elasticsearch as search engine for your Ghost blog*](https://blog.lsonline.fr/2020/07/08/elasticsearch-as-search-engine-for-your-ghost-blog/), I shared the docker-compose file for Elasticsearch with you. You must change the file to restrict the external network and specify the local network only: ```docker version: '3.7' services: ghost-elasticsearch: ... networks: - no-internet ... ghost-logstash: ... networks: - no-internet ... networks: no-internet: external: name: no-internet ``` Limit access to the local network only for Elasticsearch Once the changes made, `down` and `up` your Elasticsearch container. Ensure the following connexions between the servers: - Elasticsearch <-> Logstash - Logstash <-> Ghost blog database - Ghost blog <-> Ghost blog database - Nginx <-> Ghost blog - Nginx <-> Elastisearch Maybe a little schema to be clearer? Ok, here the new HTTP feed redirection: ![](https://blog.lsonline.fr/content/images/2020/07/ghost-elasticsearch-schema-1.png) You are now ready to request your Elasticsearch on safe use ? ## JavaScript code implementation At this point, I am pretty sure you can not wait anymore to test your configuration and know how you can launch requests via JavaScript on your new search engine ? Without further ado, the part of JavaScript to launch the requests against your search is: ```javascript function sendQuerySearch(keyword) { /* Because we are using the same hostname, we can use relative URL */ var t = '/api/search'; var s = typeof XMLHttpRequest != 'undefined' ? new XMLHttpRequest() : new ActiveXObject('Microsoft.XMLHTTP'); /* Open an async POST request */ s.open('POST', t, true); s.setRequestHeader("Accept", "application/json;odata=verbose"); s.setRequestHeader("Content-Type", "application/json"); /* If you enabled the authentication on your Elastic search enable credentials */ s.withCredentials = true; /* Use basic authentication * elasticsearch_auth match with btoa("elastic:yourpassword"); */ s.setRequestHeader("Authorization", "Basic " + elasticsearch_auth); s.onreadystatechange = function () { var status; if (s.readyState == 4) { // `DONE` status = s.status; if (status == 200) { /* retrieve the request answer */ var data = JSON.parse(s.responseText); } else { /* Something is wrong. Add console to see what is happening */ } } }; /* Body request */ var body = { "size": 500, "from": 0, "query": { "query_string": { "query": keyword, "default_operator": "AND" } }, "post_filter": { "term": { "status": "published" } }, "highlight": { "fields": { "title": { }, "custom_excerpt": { } } } }; /* Send the request against Elasticsearch api */ s.send(JSON.stringify(body)); } ``` JavaScript function to request Elasticsearch - **size**: number of results returned by the search engine. It can be increased or you can manage the pagination with the `from` property - **from**: return results of the search from a specific *index* - **query**: - **query**: `keyword` that corresponds to the search performed by the user (the value from the HTML input) - **default\_operator**: the operator between each word of the search - **post\_filter**: filter the posts/pages by their status to return only **published** resources - **highlight**: one of the powerful features of a real search engine is to return the fields with the highlighted words from the content in accordance with the search keywords > \[note\]**Note** > > For more information about the Elasticsearch body request, see the documentation at [https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current/search-request-body.html](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current/search-request-body.html?ref=blog.lsonline.fr) You are now ready to perform search requests and get the results from JavaScript. --- ## What's next In the next part, I will share with you how to implement a search interface that looks almost like the Ghost Admin one. Hoping this post will help you ?