Nginx exception to rewrite rule - nginx

Question

My company is running a webserver with nginx. The configuration is set so that every request on a certain server block are forcefully rewritten to https, using a location block. This is the full configuration for a specific domain:
# HTTP server
server {
listen 80;
server_name www.mydomain.it mydomain.it admin.mydomain.it;
rewrite ^(.*) https://$host$1 permanent;
}
# HTTPS server
server {
listen 443;
server_name www.mydomain.it mydomain.it admin.mydomain.it;
root /usr/share/nginx/html/mydomain_server;
ssl on;
ssl_certificate /etc/certs/mydomain-bundle.crt;
ssl_certificate_key /etc/certs/mydomain.key;
ssl_session_timeout 5m;
ssl_protocols SSLv2 SSLv3 TLSv1;
ssl_ciphers HIGH:!aNULL:!MD5;
ssl_prefer_server_ciphers on;
access_log /var/log/nginx/mydomain.ssl.access.log main;
error_log /var/log/nginx/mydomain.ssl.error.log error;
location / {
try_files $uri $uri/ =404;
}
error_page 404 /404-mydomain.html;
error_page 500 502 503 504 /50x.html;
location ~ \.php$ {
fastcgi_buffer_size 128k;
fastcgi_buffers 4 256k;
fastcgi_busy_buffers_size 256k;
try_files $uri =404;
fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php-fpm/php-fpm.sock;
fastcgi_index index.php;
fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
include fastcgi_params;
}
}
This domain serves several implementations of the same software to different customers, and works like this:
Customer John: www.domain.com/John
Customer Ada: www.domain.com/Ada
etc...
Obviously, as you can see, all accesses to such URLS are redirected to HTTPS.
Now, there is a particular need for a single customer not this to happen.
I've been reading the official doc here about locations, which tells I can't non-match a particular expression (as stated here too), and I can't find a way to have it work.
I've tried to add another location block matching the customer path before the default one, like this:
server {
listen 80;
server_name www.mydomain.it mydomain.it admin.mydomain.it;
root /usr/share/nginx/html/mydomain_server;
location ^~ /Mole/ {
try_files $uri $uri/ =404;
}
location / {
rewrite ^(.*) https://$host$1 permanent;
try_files $uri $uri/ =404;
}
}
which is not working, as Mole is still being redirected to HTTPS. I've tried using "~", "=" and even simply "location /Mole/", without success. Not a browser cache problem as I've tried already flushing it. What am I missing?

Answer 1

You could try using the map directive to identify customers who prefer to use http:
map $uri $use_https {
default 1;
~^/Mole/ 0; # add other exceptions as needed
}
server {
listen 80;
server_name www.mydomain.it mydomain.it admin.mydomain.it;
root /usr/share/nginx/html/mydomain_server;
location / {
if ($use_https) { # consider using 302 for testing
return 301 https://$host$request_uri;
}
try_files $uri $uri/ =404;
}
}