Nginx Web server

Nginx as a web server¶

It is typically used as a web server for serving static files.
It is treated as a web server but the technical term for this is a reverse proxy.
- Gets the content from other servers.

Serving static content.¶

Since we will be dealing with http, we will need an http context.
We might not be needing the events context but we need to define it for nginx to work.
Inside http context we define the server context.
root directive inside the server context is the location of a bunch of different files that we would like to serve.
This is all we need to do serve the static content.

http {
    server {
        listen 8080;
        root /some/location/here;
    }
}

events{}

We cannot directly serve CSS by just including it in the root folder.
- If we do that then it will be served but the Content-Type will be text/plain where as it should be text/css.

Inside the http context we can define the different types using the types context

http {
    types {
        text/css css;
        text/html html;
    }

    server { ... }
}

But there are so many types that it would get cumbersome.
- Luckily nginx comes mime.types file.

Including mime.types in the nginx.conf folder

http {
    include mime.types;

    server { ... }
}

Since they are in the same folder we can just specify the file name but the absolute path of the file at any location like include /etc/nginx/mime.types; will also work.

Location Context¶

location context is inside the server context

http {
    server {
        listen 80;
        root /somepath/abc;

        location /fruits {
            root /somepath/abc; 
            # location of fruits folder (/somepath/abc/fruits)
        }

        location /carbs {
            alias /somepath/abc/fruits;
        }
        # now /carbs and /fruits will serve the same thing
    }
}

Location path is automatically appended to root.
alias doesn't append to the end.

root appends path, alias doesn't.

In the above examples we were assuming that we have an index.html in the folders specified by root or alias.

By default it looks for index.html but we can specify try_files and specify a bunch of different directories we want it to specify.

http {
    server {
        location /vegetables {
            root /somelocation;
            try_files /vegetables/veggies.html /index.html =404;
            # if we don't get veggies.html, index.html then give a 404
        }
    }
}

Redirects and Rewrites¶

Redirect someone when he goes to a particular path

http {
    server {
        location /crops {
            return 307 /fruits; # redirect
        }
    }
}

In a redirect the URL changes but in a rewrite the URL remains the same but different content is served.

rewrite directive is outside the location context

Last updated: 2022-11-05