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Bozzy
Asked: 2024-09-18 19:48:58 +0800 CST

Nginx rewrite directive loops, location with trailing slash doesn't match, why?

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My goal is to serve requests from mobile devices on a different URL (a specific location) than the generic one, used for desktop version of my website.

I also need to serve files from a different document root, which should be seen as the base path (I don't want my location to be part of the directory structure).

I have this config (extract):

    location / {
        if ($http_user_agent ~* '(iPhone|iPod|iPad|Android|BlackBerry|webOS|Windows Phone)') {
            rewrite ^ /mobile/ permanent;
        }
        index  index.html index.htm;
    } 

    location /mobile/ {
        root /my/mobile/website;            # new document root
        rewrite ^/mobile(.*)$ $1 break;     # strip /mobile prefix from the path
#        try_files $uri $uri/ /index.html;  # I tried this (don't know exactly what this should do), but it doesn't work anyway
        index  index.html index.htm;
    }

This doesn't work and is causing a redirection loop.

It seems that requests to www.mydomain.com/mobile/ aren't matched from the location /mobile/ section but still fall into location /, causing a 301 redirect loop.

If I leave the rewrite ^/mobile(.*)$ $1 break; directive away it works, I get an index.html page that I placed into /my/mobile/website/mobile directory for testing, but that's not where my files should be served from.

What am I missing?

nginx

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    I am guessing that the problem is index.

    • The original URL is /mobile/.
    • The rewrite...break changes the URL to / but remains inside the same location block to continue processing the request.
    • The index directive changes the URL to /index.html then searches for a matching location which moves to the other location block, resulting in a redirection loop.

    You could consider using alias to replace both root and rewrite...break.

    For example:

    location /mobile/ {
    alias /my/mobile/website/;
    index  index.html index.htm;
}

    Note that the location and alias statements should both end with / or neither end with / for correct alias operation.

    • 2