rewrite

If the specified regular expression matches a request URI, URI is changed as specified in the replacement string. The rewrite directives are executed sequentially in order of their appearance in the configuration file. It is possible to terminate further processing of the directives using flags. If a replacement string starts with “http://”, “https://”, or “$scheme”, the processing stops and the redirect is returned to a client.

An optional flag parameter can be one of:

last

stops processing the current set of ngx_http_rewrite_module directives and starts a search for a new location matching the changed URI;

break

stops processing the current set of ngx_http_rewrite_module directives as with the break directive;

redirect

returns a temporary redirect with the 302 code; used if a replacement string does not start with “http://”, “https://”, or “$scheme”;

permanent

returns a permanent redirect with the 301 code.

The full redirect URL is formed according to the request scheme ($scheme) and the server_name_in_redirect and port_in_redirect directives.

Example:

server {
    ...
    rewrite ^(/download/.*)/media/(.*)\..*$ $1/mp3/$2.mp3 last;
    rewrite ^(/download/.*)/audio/(.*)\..*$ $1/mp3/$2.ra  last;
    return  403;
    ...
}

But if these directives are put inside the “/download/” location, the last flag should be replaced by break, or otherwise nginx will make 10 cycles and return the 500 error:

location /download/ {
    rewrite ^(/download/.*)/media/(.*)\..*$ $1/mp3/$2.mp3 break;
    rewrite ^(/download/.*)/audio/(.*)\..*$ $1/mp3/$2.ra  break;
    return  403;
}

If a replacement string includes the new request arguments, the previous request arguments are appended after them. If this is undesired, putting a question mark at the end of a replacement string avoids having them appended, for example:

rewrite ^/users/(.*)$ /show?user=$1? last;

If a regular expression includes the “}” or “;” characters, the whole expressions should be enclosed in single or double quotes.