Nginx rewrite on specific files

nginxredirect

I have a small issue with redirecting two files from location A to location B using nginx. Those files were in a folder folderA and now I want them to be served from folderB. Unfortunately some users know the direct URL so I have to a) redirect folderA to folderB and then do the same for the relevant files.

I am using the following:

location /folderA {
    rewrite ^ http://www.example.com/folderB/ permanent;
}

and that works fine for the folder redirect. To also cater for the files I could not find anything to suit me so I created a small php script that will receive a q variable and then perform the redirects. i.e.:

location /folderA {
    try_files $uri $uri/ folderB/process.php?q=$uri&$args;
}

Unfortunately that does not work. When a request goes for the folder, the process.php is called. However when a request comes directly for a file (say abc.pdf) it doesn't get served and it gets logged in the error log.

I was under the impression that all the requests would actually end up being processed by process.php but apparently I am wrong.

Any pointers would be more than appreciated.

Thank you!

Best Answer

You can try this:

location ~* ^/folderA/.*$ {
    rewrite ^/folderA/$ http://www.example.com/folderB/ permanent;
    try_files $uri $uri/ /folderB/process.php?q=$uri&$args;
}

If it doesn't work, the error log can be of help here. Also remember that the try_files line uses $uri that includes the folder name. So the try_files in the case of abc.pdf is /foderA/abc.pdf.

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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 {
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nginx try_files – How Does try_files Work in nginx?

try_files tries the literal path you specify in relation to the defined root directive and sets the internal file pointer. If you use for instance try_files /app/cache/ $uri @fallback; with index index.php index.html; then it will test the paths in this order:

$document_root/app/cache/index.php
$document_root/app/cache/index.html
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before finally internally redirecting to the @fallback named location. You can also use a file or a status code (=404) as your last parameter but if using a file it must exist.

You should note that try_files itself will not issue an internal redirect for anything but the last parameter. Meaning you cannot do the following: try_files $uri /cache.php @fallback; as that will cause nginx to set the internal file pointer to $document_root/cache.php and serve it, but since no internal redirect takes place the locations aren't re-evaluated and as such it will be served as plain text. (The reason it works with PHP files as the index is that the index directive will issue an internal redirect)

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