I have two working configurations that, on the surface, seem to do the same thing. They both accomplish the functionality that I need:
location ~ ^/(css|images|js)/ {
location ~ '^/(css|js)/[0-9]{8}-(.*)$' {
alias /$1/$2;
}
root /server/path/to/web/root;
}
AND
location ~ ^/(css|images|js)/ {
rewrite '^/(css|js)/[0-9]{8}-(.*)$' /$1/$2 break;
root /server/path/to/web/root;
}
They both take a URL like /css/87654321-styles.css and deliver the file /css/styles.css. I lean toward the second solution because it's more succinct, but I don't know if one is better than the other for performance reasons, unintended side-effects, etc.
Here's my original SO post, for reference/context: http://stackoverflow.com/q/27406188/244826
UPDATE
After being directed to the documentation for the Nginx rewrite module, I found these interesting lines:
The ngx_http_rewrite_module module directives are processed in the following order:
- the directives of this module specified on the server level are executed sequentially;
- repeatedly:
- a location is searched based on a request URI;
- the directives of this module specified inside the found location are executed sequentially;
- the loop is repeated if a request URI was rewritten, but not more than 10 times.
So, if I used the rewrite directive without the break flag, there could be at least one additional loop of the server level directive.
