location ^~ modifier

[Francis Daly]

On Tue, Dec 08, 2015 at 06:33:52PM +0100, B.R. wrote:

Hi there,

> That means the following is a 'prefix' location block:
> location /whatever/ {
> }
> 
> That said, this block will match the /whatever/ string anywhere in the URI
> string, not only at its start.

No, it won't.

===
    location / {
        return 200 "in location /\n";
    }

    location /aaa/ {
        return 200 "in location /aaa/\n";
    }
===

$ curl http://localhost/aaa/bbb/
in location /aaa/

$ curl http://localhost/bbb/aaa/
in location /

> As a consequence, to me, the meaning of 'prefix' was not tied to the
> location of the matched string in the URI, but rather a definition more
> like 'matching a string in the URI'.

No.

"prefix" has its normal English language meaning. The documentation at
http://nginx.org/r/location is correct.

(I think the documentation there is *incomplete*, as it is not immediately
clear to me how nested locations are searched. But that has been clarified
on the mailing list recently, and that clarification matches what can
be seen in tests.)

> Where is the exit of the maze again?

prefix matches -- without modifier, with modifier ^~, and (technically,
probably) with modifier = -- are exact string matches at the start of
the url. (And consequently should all start with the character "/".)

If you want to match something that is not an exact string match at the
start of the url, you must use something that is not a prefix match.

	f
-- 
Francis Daly        francis at daoine.org