Can I cache a page conditionally based on cookie value?

[Maxim Dounin]

Hello!

On Tue, May 14, 2013 at 09:23:08PM -0400, patng323 wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> Using NginX as a reverse proxy, I want to cache the response ONLY if the
> user has NOT logged in, which can be checked by testing the existence of a
> cookie.
> 
> First I tried to use "if", but NginX complained that I cannot put a
> proxy_cache_valid inside an "if":
> 
> location / {
> proxy_pass http://www.xyz.com;
> if ($cookie_login = '') {
> proxy_cache my-cache;
> proxy_cache_valid 200 301 302 60m;
> }
> }
> 
> 
> Then I tried to set the cache-duration to 0s by using a variable, but then
> NginX complained the time value is incorrect.
> set $cacheDuration 60m;
> if ($cookie_login != '') {
> set $cacheDuration 0s;
> }
> 
> proxy_cache my-cache;
> proxy_cache_valid 200 301 302 $cacheDuration
> 
> 
> So is there any way to cache conditionally based on the existence of a
> cookie?

Something like

    proxy_no_cache $cookie_login;

should do the trick.  See http://nginx.org/r/proxy_no_cache for 
details.

-- 
Maxim Dounin
http://nginx.org/en/donation.html