NGINX try_files, not loading language specific index.html

Andre M

11/9/23, 8:02 PM

We are wanting it so that when the website is accessed, we serve the appropriate index.html for the language in the Accept-Language request header. The problem is that our configuration does not seem to be working.

The configuration we have in NGINX (the two add_header lines are for debugging):

    set $first_language $http_accept_language;
    if ($http_accept_language ~* '^(.+?),') {
        set $first_language $1;
    }

    set $language_suffix 'en';
    if ($first_language ~* 'fr') {
        set $language_suffix 'fr';
    }

    location / {
        root        /usr/share/nginx/html;
        add_header x-eval-lang $language_suffix;
        if (-f /index.$language_suffix.html) {
          add_header x-xxx '33';
        }
        try_files   $uri $uri/ /index.$language_suffix.html /index.html;
    }

In the folder we have:

  index.html
  index.en.html
  index.fr.html

The expected behaviour is to serve up index.en.html or index.fr.html as appropriate, but is instead serving up index.html. We aren't getting the x-xxx header added, suggesting I am not constructing the filename properly.

This is running in a Docker container.

So testing in a non-Dockerised NGINX server shows this should work, suggesting that it is not seeing the localised files for some reason.

NGINX version is 1.22.1

411

1 + 2

nginx

Richard Smith

11/9/23, 9:02 PM

Don't use `if` inside a `location` for debugging. It will [not work as you expect](https://www.nginx.com/resources/wiki/start/topics/depth/ifisevil/).

Richard Smith

11/9/23, 9:06 PM

Your `try_files` statement tests `$uri/` *before* your language specific term, which may return an `index.html` file for URIs which end with a `/`.

Score:0

Server

Andre M

11/15/23, 5:04 AM

After a lot of experimenting, simply providing a modified index directive resolved the issue (based on docs on static content):

    # Alternative recipe for getting header language, taken from
    # https://www.nginx.com/resources/wiki/modules/accept_language/#alternative
    set $first_language $http_accept_language;
    if ($http_accept_language ~* '^(.+?),') {
        set $first_language $1;
    }

    set $language_suffix 'en';
    # case sensitive for language portion, so en-FR, for example,
    # will not be treated as French
    if ($first_language ~ 'fr') {
        set $language_suffix 'fr';
    }

    location / {
        root        /usr/share/nginx/html;
        index index.$language_suffix.html index.html;
        try_files   $uri $uri/ /index.html;
    }

So if $language_suffix is 'fr' then the index directive resolves to:

index index.fr.html index.html

BTW the 'Docker' container difference was a red-herring, since further testing showed the NGINX could serve the file and the non-Dockerised version wasn't quite configured in the same way.

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