Nginx HTTP Server - Fourth Edition

Rewrite

While the previous directive error_page is not actually part of the Rewrite module, detailing its functionality provides a solid introduction to the way Nginx handles client requests.

Similar to how the error_page directive redirects to another location, rewriting the URI with the rewrite directive generates an internal redirect:

server { 
    server_name website.com; 
    root /var/www/vhosts/website.com/httpdocs/; 
    location /storage/ { 
        internal; 
        alias /var/www/storage/; 
    } 
    location /documents/ { 
        rewrite ^/documents/(.*)$ /storage/$1; 
    } 
} 

A client query to http://website.com/documents/file.txt initially matches the second location block (location /documents/). However, the block contains a rewrite instruction that transforms the URI from