Nginx as reverse-proxy: serving files without extension - nginx

Question

I'm currently using Nginx coupled with Apache, serving following static files with success.
Extract from my /sites-enabled/default:
location ~* ^.+.(jpg|jpeg|gif|css|png|js|ico|txt|xml)$ {
root /home/website/public_html/app/public;
}
But I also have some cache files located here:
/home/website/public_html/app/storage/cache
/home/website/public_html/app/storage/views
/home/website/public_html/app/storage/sessions
/cache and /sessions also have sub-directories. All sub-directories and files have random filename, and no extension.
I want Nginx to also serve these files.
I tried this (example for /views folder), but without success. I even have nothing in logs, but Nginx restart correctly, and website load with no errors.
location /views {
alias /home/website/public/app/app/storage/views;
access_log /var/log/nginx/web.views.access.log;
error_log /var/log/nginx/web.views.error.log;
}
Tried this also, but same effects as above:
location ~* ^.$ {
root /home/website/public/app/app/storage/views;
access_log /var/log/nginx/web.views.access.log;
error_log /var/log/nginx/web.views.error.log;
}
Also tried adding add_header Content-Type application/octet-stream; in these 2 tries, but no change.
Finally, here is the http part of my nginx.conf
http {
include /etc/nginx/mime.types;
access_log /var/log/nginx/access.log;
sendfile on;
keepalive_timeout 65;
tcp_nodelay on;
gzip on;
gzip_disable "MSIE [1-6]\.(?!.*SV1)";
include /etc/nginx/conf.d/*.conf;
include /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/*;
}
(/var/log/nginx/access.log and /var/log/nginx/error.log don't show up anything related to my issue, too).
Thanks for any clue and help !
EDIT
Complete current /sites-enabled/default file (and yes, there's a double /app/, it's normal ;) )
# You may add here your
# server {
# ...
# }
# statements for each of your virtual hosts
server {
listen 80; ## listen for ipv4
listen [::]:80 default ipv6only=on; ## listen for ipv6
server_name www.website.com website.com;
#access_log /var/log/nginx/localhost.access.log;
location / {
proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $remote_addr;
proxy_set_header Host $host;
proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:8080/;
access_log off;
#root /var/www;
#index index.html index.htm;
}
location ~* ^.+.(jpg|jpeg|gif|css|png|js|ico|txt|xml)$ {
root /home/website/public_html/app/public;
expires 30d;
}
location ~* ^.$ {
add_header Content-Type application/octet-stream;
root /home/website/public/app/app/storage/views;
access_log /var/log/nginx/bt.views.access.log;
error_log /var/log/nginx/bt.views.error.log;
}
}

Answer 1

The problem is, that you need something to identify the files without any extension. A sub-directory or something that’s always present within the request. Your regular expression only matched for requests that start end end with a dot (e.g. http://example.com/.). The following server configuration assumes that all URLs start with storage, as this would be the only possibility to identify those files.
Please note that I’m using the try_files directive to rewrite the internal path where nginx should look for the file. The root directive is not meant for what you want to achieve.
And last but not least, you should always nest location blocks with regular expressions. There is no limit in the nesting level. nginx will create some kind of tree data structure to search for the best matching location. So think of a tree while writing the blocks.
server {
listen 80 default;
listen [::]:80 default ipv6only=on;
server_name www.website.com website.com;
root /home/website/public_html/app;
location / {
# Matches any request for a URL ending on any of the extension
# listed in the regular expression.
location ~* \.(jpe?g|gif|css|png|js|ico|txt|xml)$ {
expires 30d
access_log off;
try_files /public$uri =404;
}
# Matches any request starting with storage.
location ~* ^/storage {
access_log /var/log/nginx/bt.views.access.log;
error_log /var/log/nginx/bt.views.error.log;
try_files /app$uri;
}
proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $remote_addr;
proxy_set_header Host $host;
proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:8080/;
access_log off;
}
}