Nginx - Config format

Nginx is an open source config format created in 2004.

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Nginx ( EN-jin-EKS) (stylized as NGINX, NGiИX or nginx) is a web server which can also be used as a reverse proxy, load balancer, mail proxy and HTTP cache. The software was created by Igor Sysoev and first publicly released in 2004. A company of the same name was founded in 2011 to provide support and Nginx plus paid software.Nginx is free and open-source software, released under the terms of a BSD-like license. Read more on Wikipedia...

Tags: configFormat
There are at least 5,905 Nginx repos on GitHub
Early development of Nginx happened in F5, Inc
The Google BigQuery Public Dataset GitHub snapshot shows 8k users using Nginx in 9k repos on GitHub
CodeMirror package for syntax highlighting Nginx
Pygments supports syntax highlighting for Nginx
GitHub supports syntax highlighting for Nginx
Indeed.com has 2,884 matches for "nginx engineer".
See also: (5 related languages) C, Linux, Solaris, TLS, WordPress

Example from the web:

#user  nobody;
worker_processes  1;

#error_log  logs/error.log;
#pid   /run/nginx.pid;

events {
    worker_connections  1024;
}

http {
      include /etc/nginx/mime.types;
      gzip  on;
      gzip_http_version 1.1;
      gzip_comp_level 2;
      gzip_types text/plain text/html text/css
                      application/x-javascript text/xml
                      application/xml application/xml+rss
                      text/javascript;

server {
                listen       80;
                server_name  localhost;
                access_log  logs/localhost.access.log  main;
                location / {
                    root   html;
                    index  index.html index.htm;
                }
        include /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/*;
        }
}

Example from Linguist:

# Move the www people to no-www
server {
  listen 80;
  server_name www.example.com;
  return 301 $scheme://example.com$request_uri;
}

server {
  listen 80;
  listen 443 ssl;
  server_name example.com;

  # Certs sent to the client in SERVER HELLO are concatenated in ssl_certificate
  ssl_certificate /srv/www/example.com/ssl/example.com.crt;
  ssl_certificate_key /srv/www/example.com/ssl/example.com.key;
  
  # Allow multiple connections to use the same key data
  ssl_session_timeout 5m;
  ssl_session_cache shared:SSL:50m;
  
  # Diffie-Hellman parameter for DHE ciphersuites, recommended 2048 bits
  ssl_dhparam /etc/ssl/certs/dhparam.pem;

  # Intermediate configuration. tweak to your needs
  ssl_protocols TLSv1 TLSv1.1 TLSv1.2;
  include snippets/ssl_ciphers_intermediate.conf;
  ssl_prefer_server_ciphers on;

  # HSTS (ngx_http_headers_module is required) (15768000 seconds = 6 months)
  #add_header Strict-Transport-Security max-age=15768000;

  # OCSP Stapling - fetch OCSP records from URL in ssl_certificate and cache them
  ssl_stapling on;
  ssl_stapling_verify on;

  # Verify chain of trust of OCSP response using Root CA and Intermediate certs
  ssl_trusted_certificate /srv/www/example.com/ssl/unified-ssl.crt;
  resolver 8.8.8.8 8.8.4.4;
  resolver_timeout 10s;

  root /srv/www/example.com/htdocs;
  index index.php index.html index.htm;
  charset UTF-8;
  autoindex off;
  
  # Deny access based on HTTP method (set in HTTP level)
  if ($bad_method = 1) {
    return 444;
  }

  # Show "Not Found" 404 errors in place of "Forbidden" 403 errors, because
  # forbidden errors allow attackers potential insight into your server's
  # layout and contents
  error_page 403 = 404;

  # It's always good to set logs, note however you cannot turn off the error log
  # setting error_log off; will simply create a file called 'off'.
  access_log /var/log/nginx/example.com.access.log;
  error_log /var/log/nginx/example.com.error.log;

  # Add trailing slash to */wp-admin requests.
  rewrite /wp-admin$ $scheme://$host$uri/ permanent;

  location / {
    # This try_files directive is used to enable pretty, SEO-friendly URLs
    # and permalinks for Wordpress. Leave it *off* to start with, and then
    # turn it on once you've gotten Wordpress configured!
    try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$args;
  }

  # Option to create password protected directory
  # http://www.howtoforge.com/basic-http-authentication-with-nginx
  # location /admin {
  #   auth_basic "Administrator Login";
  #   auth_basic_user_file /var/www/domain.com/admin/.htpasswd;
  # }

  # Do not log access to these to keep the logs cleaner
  location = /favicon.ico {
    log_not_found off;
    access_log off;
  }

  location = /apple-touch-icon.png {
    log_not_found off;
    access_log off;
  }

  location = /apple-touch-icon-precomposed.png {
    log_not_found off;
    access_log off;
  }

  # This block will catch static file requests, such as images, css, js
  # The ?: prefix is a 'non-capturing' mark, meaning we do not require
  # the pattern to be captured into $1 which should help improve performance
  location ~* \.(?:3gp|gif|jpg|jpe?g|png|ico|wmv|avi|asf|asx|mpg|mpeg|mp4|pls|mp3|mid|wav|swf|flv|html|htm|txt|js|css|exe|zip|tar|rar|gz|tgz|bz2|uha|7z|doc|docx|xls|xlsx|pdf|iso|woff)$ {
    # Some basic cache-control for static files to be sent to the browser
    expires max;
    add_header Pragma public;
    add_header Cache-Control "public, must-revalidate, proxy-revalidate";
  }

  # Deny all attempts to access hidden files such as .htaccess, .htpasswd, .DS_Store (Mac).
  # Keep logging the requests to parse later (or to pass to firewall utilities such as fail2ban)
  location ~ /\. {
    access_log off;
    log_not_found off;
    deny all;
  }

  location ~ ~$ {
    access_log off;
    log_not_found off;
    deny all;
  }

  # Common deny or internal locations, to help prevent access to areas of
  # the site that should not be public
  location ~* wp-admin/includes {
    deny all;
  }

  location ~* wp-includes/theme-compat/ {
    deny all;
  }

  location ~* wp-includes/js/tinymce/langs/.*\.php {
    deny all;
  }

  location /wp-content/ {
    internal;
  }

  # Deny access to any files with a .php extension in the uploads directory
  # Works in sub-directory installs and also in multisite network
  # Keep logging the requests to parse later (or to pass to firewall utilities such as fail2ban)
  location ~* /(?:uploads|files)/.*\.php$ {
    deny all;
  }

  # Make sure these get through, esp with dynamic WP sitmap plugin
  location = /robots.txt {
    try_files $uri /index.php;
  }

  location = /sitemap.xml {
    try_files $uri /index.php;
  }

  location = /sitemap.xml.gz {
    try_files $uri /index.php;
  }

  # Fix for Firefox issue with cross site font icons
  location ~* \.(eot|otf|ttf|woff)$ {
    add_header Access-Control-Allow-Origin *;
  }

  # Redirect server error pages to the static page /50x.html
  # Make sure 50x.html exists at that location
  error_page 500 502 503 504 /50x.html;
    location = /50x.html {
    root /usr/share/nginx/html;
    }

  # Cache everything by default
  set $skip_cache 0;

  # POST requests and urls with a query string should always go to PHP
  if ($request_method = POST) {
    set $skip_cache 1;
  }
  if ($query_string != "") {
    set $skip_cache 1;
  }

  # Don't cache uris containing the following segments
  if ($request_uri ~* "/wp-admin/|/xmlrpc.php|wp-.*.php|/feed/|index.php|sitemap(_index)?.xml") {
    set $skip_cache 1;
  }

  # Don't use the cache for logged in users or recent commenters
  if ($http_cookie ~* "comment_author|wordpress_[a-f0-9]+|wp-postpass|wordpress_no_cache|wordpress_logged_in") {
    set $skip_cache 1;
  }

  # Pass all .php files onto a php-fpm/php-fcgi server.
  location ~ [^/]\.php(/|$) {
    # regex to split $uri to $fastcgi_script_name and $fastcgi_path
    fastcgi_split_path_info ^(.+\.php)(/.+)$;

    # Check that the PHP script exists before passing it
    try_files $fastcgi_script_name =404;

    # Bypass the fact that try_files resets $fastcgi_path_info
    # see: http://trac.nginx.org/nginx/ticket/321
    set $path_info $fastcgi_path_info;
    fastcgi_param PATH_INFO $path_info;

    fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/example.com.sock;
    fastcgi_index index.php;
    # Uncomment if site is HTTPS
    #fastcgi_param HTTPS on;
    include fastcgi.conf;
    
    fastcgi_cache_bypass $skip_cache;
    fastcgi_no_cache $skip_cache;

    fastcgi_cache WORDPRESS;
    fastcgi_cache_valid  60m;
  }

  location ~ /purge(/.*) {
    fastcgi_cache_purge WORDPRESS "$scheme$request_method$host$1";
  }

  # Use this block if PHPMyAdmin is enabled for this domain
  location /phpmyadmin {
    root /usr/share/;
    index index.php index.html index.htm;

    location ~ ^/phpmyadmin/(.+\.php)$ {
      try_files $uri =404;
      root /usr/share/;
      fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/example.com.sock;
      fastcgi_index index.php;
      include fastcgi.conf;
    }

    location ~* ^/phpmyadmin/(.+\.(jpg|jpeg|gif|css|png|js|ico|html|xml|txt))$ {
      root /usr/share/;
    }
  }

  location /phpMyAdmin {
    rewrite ^/* /phpmyadmin last;
  }
  # End PHPMyAdmin block

} # End of server block.

Language features

Feature	Supported	Example	Token
Comments	✓	# A comment
Line Comments	✓	# A comment	#
Semantic Indentation	X
MultiLine Comments	X