Nginx – Root Versus Alias for Serving Single Files

nginx

After many hours getting nginx to serve single files such as robots.txt (hint: clear your browser cache each time), I wound up with two different ways, one using the alias directive, and one using the root directive, like so:

location /robots.txt { alias /home/www/static/robots.txt; }
location /robots.txt { root /home/www/static/;  }

Is there any functional difference between the two? Or security issues? Any conflicts with other directives? (Both seemed fine with another /static location). Or any reason to pick one over the other?

Note – I didn't use both at the same time 🙂 Rather I tried each, one at a time, and both worked. I'm not asking how they both interact together in the same file, but which one would be better to use.

Best Answer

Well, these two directives are slightly functional different because you do not use exact match in the latter case. So, /robots.txt1111 will match your second location too.
location =/robots.txt { root /home/www/static/; } is an exact functional equivalent of your first directive.

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