Setting expires headers for static content served from nginx

Question

I'm using nginx to server my static content, is there a way that I can set the expires headers for every file that meets a specific rule? For example can I set the expires header for all files that have an extension of '.css'?

Answer 1

I prefer to do a more complete cache header, in addition to some more file extensions. The '?' prefix is a 'non-capturing' mark, nginx won't create a $1. It helps to reduce unnecessary load.

location ~* \.(?:ico|css|js|gif|jpe?g|png)$ {
    expires 30d;
    add_header Pragma public;
    add_header Cache-Control "public";
}

Answer 2

server {
    ...

    location ~* \.css$ {
       expires 30d;
    }
    ...
}

The location directive

The expires directive

Answer 3

You can also set the expires to maximum. Here is the directive I use for css and js.

# Set css and js to expire in a very long time
location ~* ^.+\.(css|js)$ {
    access_log off;
    expires max;
}

Answer 4

If you have one place that is home to all your static files, something like this will do...

 location /static {
            your/location/to/static/files/static;
            expires 30d;
            add_header Cache-Control "public";
    }

The accepted answer caused nginx to not find any of my static files. Not really sure why, but this is a simple alternative.