Nginx – What does the at-sign “@” mean in nginx location blocks

nginx

I've encountered a few questions and answers on here that use this syntax:

location @default {
  # ...
}

location /somewhere {
    try_files $uri @default;
}

I've searched high and low on the Googles and I can't seem to find any documentation of it. What does it mean and what are some of it's practical uses? Is it some sort of variable declaration and assignment? Sorry for the newbie question.

Best Answer

The answer is in official documentation.

The “@” prefix defines a named location. Such a location is not used for a regular request processing, but instead used for request redirection. They cannot be nested, and cannot contain nested locations.

Related Solutions

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
$document_root$uri

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)

Nginx Configuration – How to Remove Location Block from $uri

Looking around I would guess that using a regexp location with captures is the easiest. Adapting your example I end up with:

location ~ ^/cargo(.*) {
    try_files $1 $1/ /cargo/index.php?_REWRITE_COMMAND=$1&args;
}

Best Answer

Related Solutions

nginx try_files – How Does try_files Work in nginx?

Nginx Configuration – How to Remove Location Block from $uri

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