Clean URI/URL Nginx Rewrite for multiple pages & multiple variables - nginx

Question

I am pretty much a moron with regex and I'm just getting started with a cloud-based Nginx server, which is a big change from administering my in-my-closet Apache server.
I'm trying to do rewrites to get clean URLs like this:
www.domain.com/folder/red/abc ---> www.domain.com/folder/red.cfm?query=abc
www.domain.com/folder/blue/ab/cd/ef ---> www.domain.com/folder/blue.cfm?name=ab&city=cd&state=ef
www.domain.com/folder/blue/ab ---> www.domain.com/folder/blue.cfm?name=ab
I'm basically trying to get rewrites of items after the "folder" subfolder to rewrite to static .cfm pages. Some of those .cfm pages have zero, one, two or three URL variables; the number of variables is not fixed or consistent.
I have been reading A LOT about rewrites and try_files, and I have tried, oh, a couple hundred different variations of rewrites, and I just can't seem to find the solution.
For example, I've tried:
location /folder/blue {
rewrite ^/folder/(.*)?$ /folder/blue.cfm?name=$1 last;
}
And this just gets me absolutely nowhere. I would post my entire conf file, but it is long due to other stuff that was added in by the default server setup.
I would love to make this string as simple as is humanly possible, but I really need help with this. I appreciate it!

Answer 1

For future reference, it would help having a spec.
It seems like this is the only spec you've provided:
www.domain.com/folder/red/abc ---> www.domain.com/folder/red.cfm?query=abc
www.domain.com/folder/blue/ab/cd/ef ---> www.domain.com/folder/blue.cfm?name=ab&city=cd&state=ef
www.domain.com/folder/blue/ab ---> www.domain.com/folder/blue.cfm?name=ab
The following solution should 100% satisfy the above "spec":
location /folder/red/ {
rewrite ^(/folder/\w+)/(\w*)$ $1.cfm?query=$2 last;
return 410;
}
location /folder/blue/ {
rewrite ^(/folder/\w+)/(\w*)$ $1.cfm?query=$2 last;
rewrite ^(/folder/blue)/(\w*)/(\w*)/(\w*)$ $1.cfm?query=$2&city=$3&state=$4 last;
return 410;
}