Rewriting URL in an nginx Docker container wrongly uses internal port - django

Question

I have a Django application that runs in a Docker environment; one container for gunicorn and one for nginx. My application's nginx server listens on port 9081, which is internal to the system (it's not exposed to the outside world). Another nginx container (which routes traffic) sits on port 80 and sends traffic to my site as necessary (based on the hostname a request receives).
Here's my application's nginx setup, stripped down to the basics:
upstream project {
server gun_project:8001; # gunicorn container
}
server {
listen 9081;
server_name mytool.myhost.com;
set_real_ip_from 172.17.0.0/16;
real_ip_header X-Forwarded-For;
real_ip_recursive on;
location / {
proxy_pass http://project;
proxy_set_header Host $host;
proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $remote_addr;
}
}
Here's the router nginx setup, again stripped down:
upstream project {
server ngx_project:9081; # nginx container
}
server {
listen 80;
server_name mytool.myhost.com;
return 302 https://$host$request_uri;
}
server {
listen 443 ssl;
server_name mytool.myhost.com;
# SSL Info
ssl_certificate /etc/nginx/ssl/mycert.cer;
ssl_certificate_key /etc/nginx/ssl/mycert.key;
location / {
proxy_pass http://project;
proxy_set_header Host $host;
proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $remote_addr;
}
}
I want to redirect a URL on this site from one location to another (the URL has permanently changed). I'm doing so via a rewrite in the location block of my application's nginx configuration (the first nginx block above):
location / {
rewrite "^/oldpath/$" /newpath/ permanent;
proxy_pass http://project;
proxy_set_header Host $host;
proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $remote_addr;
}
When I do this, and I attempt to load the old URL (mytool.myhost.com/oldpath/) in a web browser, I'm redirected to mytool.myhost.com:9081/newpath/ which fails because it doesn't exist (that port isn't exposed externally).
Is there something basic I'm missing? I don't want that internal port to be a part of the redirect.

Answer 1

Here's how I ended up doing it:
I added a dedicated location in the nginx configuration for the site, and performed the redirect there:
# Redirect the previous URL to the newer one
location = /old-path/ {
return 302 https://$host/new-path/;
}