Why advanced patterns solve complex requirements in Nginx - See It in Action

Why advanced patterns solve complex requirements

📖 Scenario: You are managing a busy website that needs to handle different types of requests efficiently. Some requests need special treatment, like redirecting users based on their location or blocking bad traffic. Simple rules are not enough, so you want to use advanced nginx patterns to solve these complex needs.

🎯 Goal: Build an nginx configuration that uses advanced patterns like regular expressions and conditional blocks to route requests differently based on URL paths and user IP addresses.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a server block listening on port 80

Use a variable $blocked_ips containing a list of IPs to block

Use map directive to set a variable $is_blocked based on $remote_addr

Use location blocks with regex to match URLs starting with /api/ and /admin/

Use if condition to return 403 Forbidden for blocked IPs

Use return directives to redirect or serve content based on conditions

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Web servers often need to handle many types of requests and block bad traffic. Using advanced nginx patterns helps manage complex routing and security rules efficiently.

💼 Career

Understanding advanced nginx configuration is important for DevOps engineers and system administrators to secure and optimize web services.

1

Create the initial server block

Create an nginx server block that listens on port 80 and has a root directory set to /var/www/html.

Nginx

server {
    listen 80;
    root /var/www/html;
    # Your code here
}

Need a hint?

Use server {} block with listen 80; and root /var/www/html; inside.

2

Add blocked IPs list and map variable

Add a variable $blocked_ips with the value "192.168.1.10 10.0.0.5". Then use the map directive to create a variable $is_blocked that is 1 if $remote_addr matches any IP in $blocked_ips, otherwise 0.

Nginx

server {
    listen 80;
    root /var/www/html;
}

# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use map $remote_addr $is_blocked { ... } outside the server block to set $is_blocked.

3

Add location blocks with regex and blocking logic

Inside the server block, add two location blocks: one matching URLs starting with /api/ using regex ~ ^/api/, and another matching URLs starting with /admin/ using regex ~ ^/admin/. Inside the server block, add an if condition that returns 403 Forbidden if $is_blocked equals 1.

Nginx

server {
    listen 80;
    root /var/www/html;

    # Your code here
}

map $remote_addr $is_blocked {
    default 0;
    192.168.1.10 1;
    10.0.0.5 1;
}

Need a hint?

Use if ($is_blocked = 1) { return 403; } inside server. Use regex location ~ ^/api/ {} and location ~ ^/admin/ {}.

4

Add redirects and print final configuration

Inside the /admin/ location block, add a return 302 directive to redirect requests to /login. Then add a location / block that returns a simple HTML page with text Welcome to the homepage. Finally, print the entire nginx configuration file content.

Nginx

server {
    listen 80;
    root /var/www/html;

    if ($is_blocked = 1) {
        return 403;
    }

    location ~ ^/api/ {
        proxy_pass http://backend_api;
    }

    location ~ ^/admin/ {
        proxy_pass http://admin_panel;
        # Your code here
    }

    # Your code here
}

map $remote_addr $is_blocked {
    default 0;
    192.168.1.10 1;
    10.0.0.5 1;
}

Need a hint?

Use return 302 /login; inside /admin/ location. Add location / { return 200 '...'; } for homepage. Print full config.