Proxy cache basics in Nginx - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Proxy cache basics

📖 Scenario: You are setting up a simple web server proxy using nginx. To improve performance, you want to add caching so that repeated requests for the same content are served faster.

🎯 Goal: Build a basic nginx proxy cache configuration that caches responses from a backend server and serves cached content for repeated requests.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a cache path configuration with a specific name and location

Define a proxy cache zone with a given name

Configure a server block to use the proxy cache for requests

Print the final nginx configuration to verify the setup

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Proxy caching is used in web servers to speed up response times by storing copies of backend responses. This reduces load on backend servers and improves user experience.

💼 Career

Understanding proxy cache basics is important for DevOps engineers and system administrators who manage web infrastructure and optimize performance.

1

Create cache path configuration

Create a cache path configuration using proxy_cache_path with the path /var/cache/nginx, a cache zone named my_cache with 10 megabytes of storage, and set inactive=60m.

Nginx

# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use proxy_cache_path directive with the exact path, zone name, size, and inactive time.

2

Add proxy cache to server block

Add a server block with listen 80; and location / that proxies requests to http://backend_server. Inside the location block, add the directive proxy_cache my_cache; to enable caching using the cache zone my_cache.

Nginx

proxy_cache_path /var/cache/nginx levels=1:2 keys_zone=my_cache:10m inactive=60m;
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Define a server block with listen 80; and a location / block that includes proxy_pass and proxy_cache directives.

3

Add proxy cache key and valid time

Inside the location / block, add the directive proxy_cache_key "$scheme$request_method$host$request_uri"; to define the cache key. Also add proxy_cache_valid 200 302 10m; to cache successful responses for 10 minutes.

Nginx

proxy_cache_path /var/cache/nginx levels=1:2 keys_zone=my_cache:10m inactive=60m;

server {
    listen 80;

    location / {
        proxy_pass http://backend_server;
        proxy_cache my_cache;
        # Your code here
    }
}

Need a hint?

Use proxy_cache_key with the exact string and proxy_cache_valid for status codes 200 and 302 with 10 minutes duration.

4

Print the final nginx configuration

Print the entire nginx configuration by writing print(config) where config is a string variable containing the full configuration from previous steps.

Nginx

config = '''proxy_cache_path /var/cache/nginx levels=1:2 keys_zone=my_cache:10m inactive=60m;

server {
    listen 80;

    location / {
        proxy_pass http://backend_server;
        proxy_cache my_cache;
        proxy_cache_key "$scheme$request_method$host$request_uri";
        proxy_cache_valid 200 302 10m;
    }
}'''

# Print the config below
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use print(config) to display the full nginx configuration string.