Nginx routing rewrite config - regex

Question

Currently I'm routing all http traffic to https by defining the following server blocks for nginx.
server {
listen 80;
server_name someserver.xyz www.someserver.xyz;
rewrite ^ https://someserver.xyz$request_uri? permanent;
}
server {
listen 443;
server_name someserver.xyz;
location / {
proxy_next_upstream error timeout http_500 http_502 http_503 http_504;
proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
proxy_set_header Host $http_host;
proxy_set_header X-NginX-Proxy true;
proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
proxy_set_header Connection "upgrade";
proxy_buffer_size 8k;
proxy_http_version 1.1;
proxy_read_timeout 900;
proxy_connect_timeout 900;
proxy_pass http://desktop_upstream;
proxy_redirect off;
}
}
However, I do NOT want route http traffic to https for a particular url pattern:
http://someserver.xyz/s/[anything]
Eg. http://someserver.xyz/s/blah would not rewrite from http to https. Anything else like http://someserver.xyz/dude, http://someserver.xyz/s etc would still rewrite.
I've tried modifying the regex in the rewrite directive (to match everything but the above pattern) as well as adding a location block in the 1st server block:
server {
listen 80;
server_name someserver.xyz www.someserver.xyz;
rewrite ^.+\.xyz\/(?!s\/).* https://someserver.xyz$request_uri? permanent;
location / {
proxy_next_upstream error timeout http_500 http_502 http_503 http_504;
proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
proxy_set_header Host $http_host;
proxy_set_header X-NginX-Proxy true;
proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
proxy_set_header Connection "upgrade";
proxy_buffer_size 8k;
proxy_http_version 1.1;
proxy_read_timeout 900;
proxy_connect_timeout 900;
proxy_pass http://desktop_upstream;
proxy_redirect off;
}
}
This new server block sometimes rewrites all http traffic to https (of all patterns) and sometimes doesn't rewrite any http traffic to https.
I know the regex works as I've tested it. What I imagine happening to http traffic is:
It hits the 1st server block and determines whether to rewrite to https.
If it does rewrite, it will hit 2nd server block and goes to 2nd server block's location.
If it doesn't rewrite, it will go to 1st server block's location.
Am I doing something wrong here? Thanks for the help!

Answer 1

Your second rewrite will not work, because you are trying to match whole request string including domain part, but rewrites work for URIs
http://nginx.org/en/docs/http/ngx_http_rewrite_module.html#rewrite
Here's what you need
server {
listen 80;
server_name someserver.xyz www.someserver.xyz;
if ($request_uri !~ ^/s/ ) {
return 301 https://someserver.xyz$request_uri?;
}
# continue without redirect
}
i changed "rewrite" to "return" just because i like it more, it seems a little more readable :)

Answer 2

using two location blocks in the http server could solve this simply, without doing any if conditions
server {
listen 80;
server_name example.com www.example.com;
root /path/to/root;
location ^~ /s/(.+) {
# try_files or whatever;
}
location / {
return 301 https://$server_name$request_uri;
}
}
server {
listen 443 ssl;
server_name example.com;
root /path/to/root;
location / {
# the whole proxy here
}
}