nginx serve the same image for all image requests that start with a specific string

Question

How to configure NGINX virtual host (vhost) to serve the same image (/images/game-board.png) for all image requests that start with a specific string like /images/game-board-?

Example:

For these image requests:

• /images/game-board-is89sj.png
• /images/game-board-32jsds.png
• /images/game-board-abcx7v.png

Serve this file:

• /images/game-board.png

I've tried the below location block configurations. But they are not working.

location ~ ^/images/game-board-[^/]+\.png$ { alias /var/www/html/images/game-board.png; } 

location ~ ^/images/game-board-[^/]+\.png$ { try_files $uri /images/game-board.png; } 

Update:

Ok, I found the solution. The issue was with the priority of the location blocks. Moving the alias location block above the other location blocks (which had catch-all image rules) worked for me.

Answer 1

You can use a nested location to apply your catch-all image rules to the game-board.png file as well:

location ~ \.(gif|jpe?g|png)$ { location ~ ^/images/game-board-[^/]+\.png$ { alias /var/www/html/images/game-board.png; } # caching policy, logging, etc. } 

This should also speed up your configuration a little, eliminating one extra libpcre library call for non-image requests (a request URI won't be matched against the ^/images/game-board-[^/]+\.png$ regex pattern if matching against the \.(gif|jpe?g|png)$ regex pattern fails).