Nginx – How to Rewrite URLs Without Redirection

nginxrewrite

I used rewrite directives below in nginx to rewrite urls of static files to external CDN server.

rewrite ^/static/(css|images|js)/([a-z_\-\.]+)$ http://cdn.domain.com/$1_$2 last;

It works but it redirect the url automatically in browsers.

How can I do the above rewrite without redirects?

Best Answer

You need to change the links inside your application to point to the CDN for static includes.

When you rewrite to an http location there's nothing nginx can do but redirect the browser (since the CDN is outside of nginx, and the browser needs to get the files from the CDN). You would have the same issue with Apache or any other URL rewriter, as the CDN is not an "internal" location to the web server.

One option might be the nginx subsitution module, which can replace content as it is delivered. But that doesn't handle regular expressions, and would slow down every request. It is better just to change your application's HTML to reference the CDN URLs directly.

Related Solutions

Nginx – Rewrite a subdirectory to root on nginx

Classic case of following a down right wrong tutorial instead of reading the wiki I highly suggest reading about the features you (should) use (such as location and try_files) as well as my Nginx primer as you completely miss the basics of Nginx.

I have made an attempt to write what you want in a proper format but I cannot promise it'll work as I'm not sure I actually understand what you're trying to do, nevertheless, it should give you a basis to start from.

server {
    listen 80;
    server_name foobar;

    root /html_root;
    index index.php index.html index.htm;

    location / {
        try_files $uri $uri/ @missing;
    }

    location /app {
        # Do whatever here or leave empty
    }

    location @missing {
        rewrite ^ /app$request_uri?;
    }
}

NGINX Reverse Proxy – URL Rewrite

Any redirect to localhost doesn't make sense from a remote system (e.g. client's Web browser). So the rewrite flags permanent (301) or redirect (302) are not usable in your case.

Please try following setup using a transparent rewrite rule:

location  /foo {
  rewrite /foo/(.*) /$1  break;
  proxy_pass         http://localhost:3200;
  proxy_redirect     off;
  proxy_set_header   Host $host;
}

Use curl -i to test your rewrites. A very subtle change to the rule can cause nginx to perform a redirect.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Nginx – Rewrite a subdirectory to root on nginx

NGINX Reverse Proxy – URL Rewrite

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