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symcbean
Asked: 2019-09-28 04:15:00 +0800 CST

nginx reverse proxy selective caching

  • 772

I have nginx running as a reverse proxy. Currently this is only providing centralized SSL termination and internet connectivity. I want to enable caching for static content.

The config for a virtual host on the proxy looks something like....

server {
   listen 443 ssl http2;
   server_name www.example.com;
   ...
   location / {
       include snippets/proxydefaults.conf;
       proxy_pass http://www.example.com.origin/;
   }
}

I am not confident that the caching on the origin servers is correctly setup, hence I only want to cache things which I know are static files. If I nest the caching config, do I need to repeat the config to apply the proxying, or is this inherited from the parent location....

server {
   listen 443 ssl http2;
   server_name www.example.com;
   ...
   location / {
       include snippets/proxydefaults.conf;
       proxy_pass http://www.example.com.origin/;
       location ~* \.(gif|png|jpg|jpeg|js|css)$ {
           proxy_cache default_cache;
           # do I need to explicitly add another proxy_pass directive here?
       }
   }
}
nginx

2 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    Request handlers are always explicitly set for a location. So proxy_pass won't be inherited.

    • 1

  2. Nested locations are going bite you sooner or later; the non-trivial inheritance rules and having to copy-paste configs are both very likely causes of unnecessary problems.

    Instead, you can define a variable (set $dont_cache_this 1), set it selectively to zero on "known static" content, and use it in conjunction with the proxy_no_cache directive.

    • 1