Question

I’m curious if nginx can be configured so the cache is saved out in some manner that would make the data user-friendly? While all my options might fall short of anything anyone would consider “human friendly” I’m in general interested in how people configure it to meet their specific needs. The documentation may be complete but I am very much a learn by example type guy.

My current configuration is from an example I ran accross and if it were to be used woud is not much more than proof to me that nginx correctly proxy caches/the data

http {    

# unrelated stuff...

proxy_cache_path  /var/www/cache levels=1:2 keys_zone=my-cache:8m max_size=1000m inactive=600m;
proxy_temp_path /var/www/cache/tmp; 

server {
    server_name g.sente.cc;
    location /stu/ {
    proxy_pass http://sente.cc;
    proxy_cache my-cache;
    proxy_cache_valid  200 302  60m;
    proxy_cache_valid  404      1m;
    }
}

Answer 1

Nginx has two methods to cache content:

• proxy_store is when Nginx builds a mirror. That is, it will store the file preserving the same path, while proxying from the upstream. After that Nginx will serve the mirrored file for all the subsequent requests to the same URI. The downside is that Nginx does not control expiration, however you are able to remove (and add) files at your will.
• proxy_cache is when Nginx manages a cache, checking expiration, cache size, etc.