Why location matching controls request routing in Nginx - Test Your Understanding

Practice - 5 Tasks

1fill in blank

easy

Complete the code to define a location block that matches requests to the root URL.

Nginx

location [1] {
    proxy_pass http://backend;
}

Drag options to blanks, or click blank then click option'

A/

B~

Croot

Ddefault

Attempts:

3 left

💡 Hint

Common Mistakes

Using '~' which is for regex matching, not root path.

Using 'root' which is not a valid location path.

The / location matches the root URL path, routing requests to the backend.

2fill in blank

medium

Complete the code to match requests starting with /images/ using a prefix location.

Nginx

location [1] {
    root /var/www/images;
}

Drag options to blanks, or click blank then click option'

A/images/

B~ /images/

C^~ /images/

D/img/

Attempts:

3 left

💡 Hint

Common Mistakes

Using regex (~) when prefix match is intended.

Using a different path like '/img/' which won't match '/images/' requests.

The prefix /images/ matches all requests starting with that path.

3fill in blank

hard

Fix the error in the regex location that matches .php files.

Nginx

location [1] {
    fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php.sock;
}

Drag options to blanks, or click blank then click option'

A^~ \.php$

B/\.php$/

C~* \.php$

D~ \.php$

Attempts:

3 left

💡 Hint

Common Mistakes

Using ~* which is case-insensitive and may not be desired.

Using slashes around regex which nginx does not require.

The ~ prefix defines a case-sensitive regex match for .php files.

4fill in blank

hard

Fill both blanks to create a location block that matches requests starting with /api/ and disables regex matching.

Nginx

location [1] [2] {
    proxy_pass http://api_backend;
}

Drag options to blanks, or click blank then click option'

A^~

B/api/

C~

D~*

Attempts:

3 left

💡 Hint

Common Mistakes

Using regex (~ or ~*) which allows regex matching.

Using just /api/ without ^~ which allows regex to override.

The ^~ prefix tells nginx to match the prefix /api/ and skip regex checks.

5fill in blank

hard

Fill the two blanks to define a location block that matches exactly /status and returns 200 with a message.

Nginx

location [1] /status {
    return [2] 'OK';
}

Drag options to blanks, or click blank then click option'

A=

B^~

C200

D~

Attempts:

3 left

💡 Hint

Common Mistakes

Using regex (~) instead of exact match (=).

Omitting the return code or using wrong code.

The = prefix matches the exact URI /status, which has the highest priority and skips regex locations. return 200 'OK'; sends a success response.