Ok - i've been using this rule for a while
location ~* /(?:abc12345|12abcdef)/(.*\.(jpe?g|gif|png)) { alias /usr/local/image/$1; error_page 404 /handler.php; } where if the image file exists, it is served - if the file doesn't exist, a custom 404 error_page named /handler.php works to deliver the goods. if the image was unchanged, it would return a 304 - new images returned a 200. Almost perfect.
Problem is, returning a 404 with the image isn't the proper thing to do - I should accept the request, determine if the file exists, and if not run handler and return the image - and not show a 404.
I've tried to replace error_page with try_files, but am not getting the desired result:
location ~* /(?:abc12345|12abcdef)/(.*\.(jpe?g|gif|png)) { alias /usr/local/image/$1; try_files $uri $uri/ /handler.php; } Nothing seems to match in try_files so all requests fall through to handler.php. I understand that alias is a special match pattern, but if I try to enter in
try_files "" /handler.php; Which works, but the "" returns the incorrect content-type (Content-Type:·application/octet-stream) while handler.php returns the correct one (Content-Type:·image/jpeg)
sure, I could add in "default_type image/jpeg;" to force the default, but I run the risk of returning a jpeg content-type when the actual image could be gif or png.
I'm running debian 6 - nginx-1.0.6-1~dotdeb.2
Any ideas on how to make this work?
