Setup Nginx and SSL for Spring Boot Application

In this tutorial, we are going to set up Nginx for our Spring Boot application.

Prerequisites

A Linux/Ubuntu server
Deployed a Spring Boot application. Here is a detailed tutorial on Deploy Spring Boot Application with Docker on Ubuntu Server
A domain name points to the Ubuntu server's public IP address.

Install and Configure Nginx

First, install Nginx for reverse proxy setup

bash

sudo apt update
sudo apt install nginx

If you open your public IP address or domain URL with port 8080, you can see the nginx landing page.

Create the Reverse Proxy Config

Create a file for Nginx Configuration:

bash

sudo vi /etc/nginx/sites-available/myapp

Give your domain name instead of myapp. Add the following configuration in your file:

bash

server {
    listen 80;
    server_name api.example.com www.api.example.com;

    location / {
        proxy_pass http://localhost:8080;
        proxy_set_header Host $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;
    }
}

Here, proxy_pass will forward every request from your domain api.example.com to your running Spring Boot application.

Enable the Configuration

Use the following command to enable our configuration file:

bash

sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/myapp /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/

Check the syntax error

bash

sudo nginx -t

This must result in the successful output:

bash

nginx: the configuration file /etc/nginx/nginx.conf syntax is ok
nginx: configuration file /etc/nginx/nginx.conf test is successful

Reload Nginx

bash

sudo systemctl restart nginx

You can see the status of your running nginx as:

bash

sudo systemctl restart nginx

The output will look like this:

bash

● nginx.service - A high performance web server and a reverse proxy server
     Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/nginx.service; enabled; preset: enabled)
     Active: active (running) since Sun 2026-05-03 09:56:51 UTC; 21h ago
       Docs: man:nginx(8)

Set Up SSL with Let's Encrypt

Now lets setup HTTPs for our Spring Boot application. We are using certbot to manage this.

Install Certbot

sudo apt install python3-certbot-nginx

Obtain and Install Certificate

bash

sudo certbot --nginx -d yourdomain.com

This will create the SSL certificate and update your nginx config file. The sample updated config file looks like this: You can verify with sudo vi /etc/nginx/sites-available/myapp

bash

    listen 443 ssl; # managed by Certbot
    ssl_certificate /etc/letsencrypt/live/your-domain.com/fullchain.pem; # managed by Certbot
    ssl_certificate_key /etc/letsencrypt/live/your-domain.com/privkey.pem; # managed by Certbot
    include /etc/letsencrypt/options-ssl-nginx.conf; # managed by Certbot
    ssl_dhparam /etc/letsencrypt/ssl-dhparams.pem; # managed by Certbot

}
server {
    if ($host = your-domain.com) {
        return 301 https://$host$request_uri;
    } # managed by Certbot


    listen 80;
    server_name your-domain.com;
    return 404; # managed by Certbot


}

Now reload the Nginx.

Handle CORS in Spring Boot

You might get a CORS issue if you have a different domain that wants to communicate with your Spring Boot app. We need to set up and handle the CORS. Add the following config to your Spring application.

bash

@Configuration
public class WebConfig implements WebMvcConfigurer {

    @Override
    public void addCorsMappings(CorsRegistry registry) {
        registry.addMapping("/**")
                .allowedOrigins("https://your-frontend-doamin.com", "https://www.your-frontend-doamin.com")
                .allowedMethods("GET", "POST", "PUT", "DELETE", "OPTIONS")
                .allowedHeaders("*")
                .allowCredentials(true);
    }
}

We have configured Nginx and installed SSL for HTTPS.