Nginx rewrite rule for subdomain

Question

I have a sub-domain, something.site.com. In my main-site, site.com/something, I would like to rewrite to something.site.com, but keep the url site.com/something intact.

Is that something I can do with nginx rewrite rules?

Answer 1

Quoting from the documentation I don't think this is possible:

If the replacement string begins with http:// then the client will be redirected, and any further rewrite directives are terminated.

http://wiki.nginx.org/HttpRewriteModule#rewrite

Answer 2

You will need to look into doing a proxy_pass instead of a rewrite.

For example:

server {
  server_name site.com
  location /something {
     # you may use rewrites here to re-format the path portion of the
     # URL before passing it on.
     # e.g.:  rewrite ^/(abc)  /def last;
     proxy_pass http://something.site.com; # Proxy on the request, without redirecting.
  }
}