How to set up Nginx as a caching reverse proxy?

Question

I heard recently that Nginx has added caching to its reverse proxy feature. I looked around but couldn't find much info about it.

I want to set up Nginx as a caching reverse proxy in front of Apache/Django: to have Nginx proxy requests for some (but not all) dynamic pages to Apache, then cache the generated pages and serve subsequent requests for those pages from cache.

Ideally I'd want to invalidate cache in 2 ways:

1. Set an expiration date on the cached item
2. To explicitly invalidate the cached item. E.g. if my Django backend has updated certain data, I'd want to tell Nginx to invalidate the cache of the affected pages

Is it possible to set Nginx to do that? How?

Answer 1

I don't think that there is a way to explicity invalidate cached items, but here is an example of how to do the rest. Update As mentioned by Piotr in another answer, there is a cache purge module that you can use.

In this configuration, items that aren't cached will be retrieved from example.net and stored. The cached versions will be served up to future clients until they are no longer valid (60 minutes).

Your Cache-Control and Expires HTTP headers will be honored, so if you want to explicitly set an expiration date, you can do that by setting the correct headers in whatever you are proxying to.

There are lots of parameters that you can tune - see the nginx Proxy module documentation for more information about all of this including details on the meaning of the different settings/parameters: http://wiki.nginx.org/NginxHttpProxyModule#proxy_cache_path

http {
  proxy_cache_path  /var/www/cache levels=1:2 keys_zone=my-cache:8m max_size=1000m inactive=600m;
  proxy_temp_path /var/www/cache/tmp; 


  server {
    location / {
      proxy_pass http://example.net;
      proxy_cache my-cache;
      proxy_cache_valid  200 302  60m;
      proxy_cache_valid  404      1m;
    }
  }
}

Answer 2

I suggest you give Varnish a try. Varnish is specifically designed as a reverse proxy cache. It will honor all cache control headers you send from the origin server, which satisfies your first request.

For your second request, explicit invalidation. My strong recommendation is to change the name of the url of the resource you want to invalidate, either by renaming the file or using some form of query string cache buster. Varnish does have a PURGE operation that will remove the resource from Varnish's cache, but it will not give you control over any other caches between you and the user. As you've said you want to explicitly purge a resource, then standard http control headers won't help you. In that cases the most foolproof way to defeat the caching of a resource is to rename it.

Answer 3

For invalidating selected pages you can use "cache_purge" patch for nginx-0.8.x which does exacly what you want ;)

It's available here.

Answer 4

I believe NginxHttpProxyModule is capable of caheing http requests. Look for the directives starting with:

proxy_cache

Yes, it is possible to control cache behaviour via directives like:

proxy_cache_valid

Answer 5

Caching is pretty new function in nginx (and not so well documented for now), but stable enough to be used in production.

• Use English documentation

• Ask in Mailing lists

• Translate Russian documentation with something like Google Translate

• Use varnish

Answer 6

My solution is on site: http://linux-sysadmin.org/2010/08/nginx-invalidation-purging-content/

Answer 7

You can specifically invalidate cached pages through

proxy_cache_bypass       

Say you want to cache a page, set cache this way

location = /pageid {
  proxy_pass http://localhost:82;
  proxy_set_header   Host             $host;
  proxy_set_header   X-Real-IP        $remote_addr;
  proxy_set_header   X-Forwarded-For  $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
  proxy_ignore_headers Set-Cookie; 
  proxy_ignore_headers Cache-Control; 
  proxy_cache_bypass        $http_secret_header;
  add_header X-Cache-Status $upstream_cache_status;
}

Now, when you want to invalidate that page and cache again

Do a secret curl call with the header

curl "www.site.com/pageid" -s -I -H "secret_header:true" 

It will invalidate and cache it.

Works from nginx 0.7.

As an added bonus the add_header X-Cache-Status can be used to check if the page is from cache or not.

Answer 8

Based on the fact that you can't find docs on it, I'd be a little bit wary about relying on it in production. Have you considered Varnish? It's my "nginx of reverse proxies", small, lightweight, doing one job and doing it well.

Answer 9

If you use eTags on your application and put nginx in front of it then it will take care of the expiration for you, because if the eTag changes it will invalidate the cache.

Answer 10

There is an nginx plugin called ncache which claims to be "a web cache system base on nginx web server. faster and more efficient than squid. "

Answer 11

fastcgi_cache_path  /opt/nginx-cache  levels=2:2   keys_zone=img:50m;

    location /img/ {
        fastcgi_pass $backend;
        include fcgi_params;
        fastcgi_intercept_errors off;   
        fastcgi_cache_key $server_addr$request_uri;       
        fastcgi_cache img;
        fastcgi_cache_valid any 1m;
        fastcgi_hide_header Set-Cookie;
    }

This creates cache for /img/ location. It is in /opt/nginx-cache. Objects are cached for 1 minute.

You can write different response codes instead of any.

Now you can't invalidate cache for selected pages. Maybe in 0.8.x it will be possible.