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Accepted
Xeoncross
Asked: 2012-01-20 15:01:04 +0800 CST

How do you conditionally include files in Nginx vhost?

  • 772

In the lines below, I might have a site-specific configuration file that contains additional fastcgi_params unique to that site. If this file exists I want to load it.

server {
        listen 80 default;
        server_name _;
        root /path/www/$host;

        # Pass PHP scripts to php-fastcgi listening on port 9000
        location ~ \.php {
                include fastcgi_params;
                fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000;


                if (-f /path/www/$host/nginx.conf) {
                        include /path/www/$host/nginx.conf;
                }
        }
}

However, this doesn't work and the error I get is:

nginx: [emerg] "include" directive is not allowed here in ...

Update

I thought that rather than checking separatly, I could let include check for me.

server {
        listen 80 default;
        server_name _;
        root /path/www/$host;

        # Pass PHP scripts to php-fastcgi listening on port 9000
        location ~ \.php {
                include fastcgi_params;
                fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000;

                include /path/www/$host/*.nginx;
        }
}

However, this doesn't seem to be working.

configuration fastcgi nginx

4 Answers

  1. Well, this is rather old, but anyway, I found a work-around.

    I have a setup with vhosts configured in this style:

    /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/site.com.conf

    Instead of checking if the file exists (which isn't possible), I simply do:

    include /etc/nginx/sites-customizations/site.com.*.conf

    This way I can simply create a file in the sites-customizations-folder, which by my convention, is named the same as the main configuration. The * works pretty much like the if, as it doesn't break if there is no extra configuration files. If you like, this also enables you to add multiple extra configurations in separate files.

    • 37
  2. Best Answer

    include does its thing during server start - runtime variables like $host can't be used, nor is it able to be used in an if context, as you found out.

    You'd need to split up the server blocks for different hosts. Sorry!

    • 10

  3. I take advantage of the glob() function pattern expansion, which is used by nginx in the include directive, and works well on my Debian servers.

    In your case, try to replace this line:

    include /path/www/$host/nginx.conf;

    with this one:

    include /path/www/<hostname>/nginx[.]conf;

    it's a file mask that matches only one file, and won't make nginx complain if the file does not exist. However variables are not allowed in include directives, so you must supply a fixed value in <hostname>. We had to create a script that generates individual .conf files (one per vhost).

    Edit

    As Gerald Schneider pointed out, I was suggesting to keep $host in the replacement, which is not allowed. I've changed the suggestion above.

    • 8

  4. I know this is old but solution might help someone looking for an answer like I did.

    I had a bunch of redirects that I needed to include for a specific host only and while include is not allowed in the if directive, I ended up adding the if inside the file I was including...

    So I have an include /etc/nginx/conf.d/redirects and inside that file I have:

    if ($host = "www.example.com") {
    # Some conf or redirects for this site only.
}
    • 6