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Version 2.1 by Alexandru Pentilescu on 2023/01/08 13:17
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5 = Nginx: useful configuration directives =
6 This article will function along the lines of a //Tips and tricks//-style article, where I'll be showing off various configuration directives for nginx to use in the wild to achieve specific purposes.
7 Hopefully, this article will grow over time.
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15
16 = Mapping a specific URL location to a directory location on the system =
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18 Sometimes, you may want a very simple configuration where you have a specific URL location (i.e. **https://pentilescu.com/bin/**) and you want this URL prefix to indicate to Nginx to use a specific directory on the system to look for the requested files in. Or, in other words, every HTTP GET request sent to **https://pentilescu.com/bin/** (e.g. **https://pentilescu.com/bin/folder1/myfile.png**) to be searched for in a specific systems directory (e.g. **/var/www/static/**). This way, a request for **https://pentilescu.com/bin/folder1/myfile.png** should resolve to **/var/www/static/folder1/myfile.png**. How do we do this?
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20 Simple! We use the "alias" directive, like so!
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22 {{code language="nginx"}}
23 server {
24 server_name pentilescu.com;
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26 location /robots.txt {
27 alias /var/www/static/robots.txt;
28 }
29
30 location /sitemap.xml {
31 alias /var/www/static/sitemap.xml;
32 }
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34 location /bin/ {
35 alias /var/www/static/;
36 }
37
38 location / {
39 return 301 https://alexandru.pentilescu.com$request_uri;
40 }
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42 listen 80;
43 listen [::]:80;
44 listen 443 ssl;
45 listen [::]:443;
46 }
47 {{/code}}
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49 Please note that the most important part of that snippet is the **location /bin/** directive, followed by the **alias**, which tells nginx to map all GET requests sent to the **/bin/** URL to the **/var/www/static** directory.
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51 The other directories above it (i.e. the **location /robots.txt** directive) also use the **alias** directive, but they use it to map to a specific file location, rather than a directory location. This is also possible.
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57 {{box title="**Contents**"}}{{toc /}}{{/box}}
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