In nginx, how to allow any string as an http method? - nginx

Question

I'm using nginx as a reverse proxy server.
My application servers behind it accept custom extension methods for requests.
For example, "MYMETHOD".
However the nginx default configuration seems to only accept non-extension methods, such as HEAD, GET, POST, etc, and returns a default nginx 400 response for requests that did not have a non-extension method, instead of proxying those requests to my app servers.
How can I make nginx accept and proxy any http requests regardless of their method?
I do not want to whitelist specific methods, because this would require me to change the nginx configuration every time I need to support a new method in my app servers, and I do not want those to be tightly coupled.
[edit]
The solution has to work for official supported nginx distributions, either on nginx.com or popular linux distributions (debian, centos, etc).
Obviously I can just alter the nginx source code and make it pass along any methods, but if I'm altering the source code and recompiling it's no longer nginx but rather a fork of it.

Answer 1

You can use ngx_http_allow_methods_module for allowing custom HTTP methods. This module allows arbitrary HTTP methods to be passed to a backend application.
Example:
http {
server {
location /api/ {
allow_methods ".*";
}
}
}
Directive
allow_methods "^(GET|POST|PUT|DELETE|PATCH|LINK|COPY)$";
This directive describes HTTP methods that should be passed along. The pattern is case-sensitive (as per RFC 2616). If it is absent, the default rules of Nginx apply. You should use this directive only in the locations that you really need it in.