Nginx – How to use nginx reverse_proxy for PUT requests

http-methodnginxreverse-proxy

When I use nginx as reverse proxy in front of some other web application, it seems not to forward PUT requests, but shows an HTTP 405 generated by nginx (and not the upstream server).

I tried the proxy_next_upstream method for http_405, but it did not work. I wonder why nginx itself checks the HTTP method anyway for a location block which has a reverse_proxy configured.

Best Answer

Nginx is not the problem here. It forwards PUT requests in reverse proxy blocks as expected, if the location matches the request.

I had another location directive, which makes sure images are not served via the reverse proxy. It matched everything with .png (and some other file extensions) in the end, which matched the upload-urls as well.

For the wrong location block, the error 405 is correct. The solution is to make sure the upload requests are actually forwarded into the reverse proxy.

An example for a working reverse proxy configuration:

# proxy requests for /upload the a webapp, which implements PUT
location ^~ /upload {
    proxy_pass "https://backendserver:1234/something";
    proxy_http_version 1.1;
    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;
    proxy_buffering off;
    tcp_nodelay on;
}

The configuration works fine, if there are no other location blocks, which take precedence.
My problem was another block:

# This block matched requests for /upload/somefile.png before the proxy block
location ~* ^(/.*png|/.*jpg|/.*jpeg|/.*gif)$ {
    # some directives without proxy_pass
}

Related Solutions

Nginx – How to Set Up as a Caching Reverse Proxy

I don't think that there is a way to explicitly invalidate cached items, but here is an example of how to do the rest. Update: As mentioned by Piotr in another answer, there is a cache purge module that you can use. You can also force a refresh of a cached item using nginx's proxy_cache_bypass - see Cherian's answer for more information.

In this configuration, items that aren't cached will be retrieved from example.net and stored. The cached versions will be served up to future clients until they are no longer valid (60 minutes).

Your Cache-Control and Expires HTTP headers will be honored, so if you want to explicitly set an expiration date, you can do that by setting the correct headers in whatever you are proxying to.

There are lots of parameters that you can tune - see the nginx Proxy module documentation for more information about all of this including details on the meaning of the different settings/parameters: http://nginx.org/r/proxy_cache_path

http {
  proxy_cache_path  /var/www/cache levels=1:2 keys_zone=my-cache:8m max_size=1000m inactive=600m;
  proxy_temp_path /var/www/cache/tmp; 


  server {
    location / {
      proxy_pass http://example.net;
      proxy_cache my-cache;
      proxy_cache_valid  200 302  60m;
      proxy_cache_valid  404      1m;
    }
  }
}

NGINX Redirect – How to Rewrite All HTTP Requests to HTTPS While Maintaining Sub-Domain

Correct way in new versions of nginx

Turn out my first answer to this question was correct at certain time, but it turned into another pitfall - to stay up to date please check Taxing rewrite pitfalls

I have been corrected by many SE users, so the credit goes to them, but more importantly, here is the correct code:

server {
       listen         80;
       server_name    my.domain.com;
       return         301 https://$server_name$request_uri;
}

server {
       listen         443 ssl;
       server_name    my.domain.com;
       # add Strict-Transport-Security to prevent man in the middle attacks
       add_header Strict-Transport-Security "max-age=31536000" always; 

       [....]
}

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Nginx – How to Set Up as a Caching Reverse Proxy

NGINX Redirect – How to Rewrite All HTTP Requests to HTTPS While Maintaining Sub-Domain

Correct way in new versions of nginx

Related Topic