Expires directive in Nginx - Cheat Sheet & Quick Revision

Recall & Review

beginner

What is the purpose of the expires directive in nginx?

The expires directive sets the caching time for responses, telling browsers how long to keep files before requesting them again.

beginner

How do you set a file to expire 1 hour after it is served using the expires directive?

Use expires 1h; inside the location or server block to tell browsers to cache the file for 1 hour.

intermediate

What does expires max; do in nginx?

It sets the cache expiration to a very long time (about 10 years), effectively telling browsers to keep the file indefinitely.

intermediate

How does the expires directive affect HTTP headers?

It modifies the Expires and Cache-Control headers to control browser caching behavior.

advanced

Can the expires directive use negative values? What happens if you use expires -1;?

Yes, negative values are allowed. expires -1; tells browsers not to cache the response and to revalidate it every time.

What does expires 30d; mean in an nginx config?

A Expire the file immediately

B Cache the file for 30 days

C Cache the file for 30 minutes

D Disable caching

expires 30d; tells browsers to cache the file for 30 days before requesting it again.

Which HTTP headers does the expires directive modify?

A User-Agent and Referer

B Content-Type and Content-Length

C Authorization and Cookie

D Expires and Cache-Control

The expires directive sets the Expires and Cache-Control headers to control caching.

What happens if you set expires off; in nginx?

A Caches files forever

B Sets cache to 1 hour

C Disables setting the Expires header

D Causes an error

expires off; disables adding the Expires header, so caching is not controlled by nginx.

How would you tell nginx to set caching to 10 minutes?

A expires 10m;

B expires 10h;

C expires 10s;

D expires 10d;

expires 10m; sets the cache time to 10 minutes.

What is the effect of expires -1; in nginx?

A Prevents caching and forces revalidation

B Caches for 1 second

C Caches forever

D Caches for 1 minute

expires -1; tells browsers not to cache and to check with the server every time.

Explain how the expires directive controls browser caching in nginx.

Think about how browsers know when to ask for a new file.

Describe a scenario where you would use expires max; and why.

Consider files that don’t change often and can be cached for a long time.