Using request URI path to store cached files instead of MD5 hash-based path

[rnmx18]

Hi,

If proxy caching is enabled, NGINX is saving the files under subdirectories
of the proxy_cache_path, based on the MD5 hash of the cache-key and the
levels parameter value.

Is it possible to change this behaviour through configuration to cache the
files using the request URI path itself, say, under the host-name directory
under the proxy_cache_path.

For example, if the proxy_cache_path is /tmp/cache1 and the request is
http://www.example.com/movies/file1.mp4, then can the file get cached as
/tmp/cache1/www.example.com/movies/file1.mp4

I think such a direct way of defining cached file paths would help in
finding or locating specific content in cache. Also, it would be helpful in
purging content from cache, even using wild-carded expressions. 

However, I seem to be missing the key benefit of why files are stored based
on MD5 hash based paths.

Could someone explain the reason for using MD5 hash based file paths? 

Also, with vanilla-NGINX, if there is no configurable way to use direct
request URI paths, is there any external module which could help me to get
this functionality?

Thanks
Rajesh

Posted at Nginx Forum: https://forum.nginx.org/read.php?2,276700,276700#msg-276700