Is it logical and safe to add Nginx cache expiration directive to the default conf?

Question

This is my Nginx default conf (sites-available/default), which I use as base conf for all apps:

server {
    # listen, root, index, server_name, locations;
    listen 80 default_server;
    listen [::]:80 default_server;
    root /var/www/html;
    index index.php index.html index.htm index.nginx-debian.html;
    server_name _;

    location / {
        try_files $uri $uri/ =404;
    }
    location ~ \.php$ {
        include snippets/fastcgi-php.conf;
        fastcgi_pass unix:/run/php/php7.0-fpm.sock;
    }
}

Each app also has an individual Nginx conf (sites-available/${domain}.con):

server {
    root ${drt}/${domain}/;
    server_name ${domain} www.${domain};
    location ~* \.(jpg|jpeg|png|gif|ico|css|js|ttf|woff|pdf)$ { expires 365d; }
}

There is a small duplication here: If I have say 10 apps on that server, I get a duplication of *10 lines of the cache expiration directive:

location ~* \.(jpg|jpeg|png|gif|ico|css|js|ttf|woff|pdf)$ { expires 365d; }

Instead having ten location ~* \.(jpg|jpeg|png|gif|ico|css|js|ttf|woff|pdf)$ { expires 365d; } entries, is it logical / safe to delete all of these entries and keep just one such line in the default conf? These are personal apps and I personally see no problem giving them all the same caching directives, I just want to reduce redundancy.

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Feb 02 '18 at 02:29

That won't work, a request is serviced by a single server block unless explicity forwarded to another.

The way to do this is with includes. For example

# File site-a.conf
server {
  root /var/www/site1;
  server_name sub1.example.com;

  include /etc/nginx/fragments/jpeg-expires.conf;
}

# File site-b.conf
server {
  root /var/www/site2;
  server_name sub2.example.com;

  include /etc/nginx/fragments/jpeg-expires.conf;
}

# file /etc/nginx/fragments/jpeg-expires.conf
location ~* \.(jpg|jpeg|png|gif|ico|css|js|ttf|woff|pdf)$ {
  expires 365d; 
}

You can define as many files to include as you like, and include them anywhere. Beware of recursion.

Thanks Tim. What is recursion in including, for sub domain sites? Small parenthesis might help. — Arcticooling, Feb 02 '18 at 02:52
If file1 includes file2, then file2 includes file1. Nginx might prevent that, or it might fail. — Tim, Feb 02 '18 at 03:59

Is it logical and safe to add Nginx cache expiration directive to the default conf?

1 Answers1