Nginx rewrite location internally to serve static content

nginxroutingstatic-contentstatic-routesUbuntu

I'm trying to serve static content from an endpoint that differs in hierarchy structure than the actual root directory structure. This is the result I'm trying to achieve:

0.0.0.0/Claw/scripts/main.js -> /home/ubuntu/Claw/public/scripts/main.js

I'm using the following Nginx configuration:

location ~ ^/Claw/(images/|styles/|scripts/) {
    root /home/ubuntu/Claw/public;
    access_log off;
    expires max;
}

This is failing as /home/ubuntu/Claw/public/Claw/scripts/main.js doesn't exist. Therefore I need to remove the prefixed Claw from the location internally. How can I go about doing this?

I want this structure so I can host multiple Node apps from different endpoints on the same domain.

Best Answer

Try this:

location ~ ^/Claw/(?<subdir>images|styles|scripts)/(?<file>.*) {
    alias /home/ubuntu/Claw/public/$subdir/$file;
    access_log off;
    expires max;
}

It seems that nginx doesn't pass variables captured into numbered variables from location directive to inside the block. When the variables are given names, then they work.

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; 

       [....]
}

Nginx – Help needed setting up nginx to serve static files

I looked at the nginx error logs and found that it was trying to serve the media from /var/django/myproject/site_media/site_media instead of /var/django/myproject/site_media --weird.

I changed root /var/django/myproject/site_media; to root /var/django/myproject; and it works now.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

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

Correct way in new versions of nginx

Nginx – Help needed setting up nginx to serve static files

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