Help with locations and regex

[anon59682]

Hi,

I'm trying to serve up static files for some paths and proxy_pass for others
and I can't figure it out.

=== Requirements ===

Location 1: the following paths should all load the requested file from
/home/user/project/dist/ and fall back to /home/user/project/dist/index.html
if the explicit filename was not found (ideally, without a redirect):

/admin
/admin/
/admin/favicon.ico
/admin/foo
/admin/foo/logo.png
etc. - basically, anything beginning with /admin/ or /admin itself (but not
/admin123)

Location 2: the root path should proxy_pass to a process running on another
port. This is separate from location 3 because it has different location
settings (such as auth).

Location 3: all first-level paths off the root should proxy_pass to the
process on the other port, for example:

/foo
/bar123
/foo/baz # this would NOT be proxy passed, it can just fall through and 404
or whatever

=== End of Requirements ===

So far, the closest I have come is a situation where location 2 and 3 are
working, but location 1 only partially works. In my current configuration
for location 1, it will accept anything beginning with /admin (including
/admin123) and it will 301 redirect /admin to /admin/ (note the trailing
slash). Here is that config:

server {
    listen 80 default_server;
    server_name my.domain;
    root /home/user/project/dist;
    index index.html;

    # Location 1
    location ^~ /admin {
        alias /home/user/project/dist;
        try_files $uri $uri/ /admin/index.html;
    }

    # Location 2
    location = / {
        # other stuff omitted for brevity
        proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:8080;
    }

    # Location 3
    location ~ /([^\/]+)$ {
        # other stuff omitted for brevity
        proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:8080;
    }
}

I thought I should be able to use ^/admin(?:/.*)?$ for the location 1 match,
but that causes /admin/ to fall through to the default nginx 404 while
/admin and /admin/foo are caught by location 3. Using that new match and
changing the location modifier from ^~ to ~ catches everything correctly,
but then every location 1 request results in the following error:

rewrite or internal redirection cycle while internally redirecting to
"/admin/index.html"

I assume that's because I shouldn't be using alias and/or the try_files
directive is wrong when using that regex, but I haven't been able to find
the magic combination.

Is there any saint out there who knows how to satisfy all 3 requirements?

Thanks,
Anonymous Coward

Posted at Nginx Forum: https://forum.nginx.org/read.php?2,277012,277012#msg-277012