Nginx location prefix issue

Question

I noticed in my error logs that some requests for favicon.??? are looking for the file in various directories (not root). I used "grep" and checked my server files and all meta tags, etc - and they all point to /favicon.ico

So I solved this issue by doing this :

location ~* favicon\.(.*) {
    expires   365d;
    etag      on;
    try_files /favicon.ico =404;
}

What I would like to do is use the following prefix so my other regexp locations are not searched :

location ^~ favicon\.(.*)

However, that does not work and never matches, even for /favicon.??? requests.

Is it possible to use the "^~" prefix and still have it match for "favicon.???" in ANY directory request?

Answer 1

The ^~ modifier affects the behaviour of prefix locations. It is not a regex location.

To make your location ~* favicon\. match before your other regex locations, simply make it the first regex location encountered in the server container.

See this document for details.