nginx dirty debugging trick

_nginx_dirty_debugging.md

nginx dirty debugging

Like PHP's die() or ruby's raise, but for nginx config files.

Option 1, have external webservice to echo out the variable of interest:

rewrite ^ http://httpbin.org/get?abuse=$abuse last; break;

Option 2: just include it in HTTP headers:

    root /var/www/nginx-default;
    
    location / {
      add_header X-nginx-abuse $abuse;
      add_header X-nginx-bad-bot $bad_bot;
      try_files $uri @apache;
    }
    location @apache {
      proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:80;
      proxy_set_header Host $host;
    }

Note that add_header doesn't work on pages with error (404/403/etc), see see http://wiki.nginx.org/HttpHeadersModule#add_header