Debugging nginx config with add_header

2024-03-03

Problem

Sometimes you are configuring the nginx server and it doesn’t work as expected. You are not sure what’s wrong with the config file. You can use the add_header directive to debug the issue.

Solution

For this tutorial i am using this config file which you can find in my github repo

 
http {
  server {
    listen 8080;
    location / {
      root /usr/share/nginx/html;
    }

    location /site1/ {
      # here is the add_header directive
      add_header Debug_value "Daniel was here";
      root /;
    }

    location /site2/ {
      root /;
    }
   }
}

events {}
 

You can check this value on your browser by inspecting the network tab. You can see the Debug_value in the response header.