How do I make nginx cache rewritten assets? - cakephp

Question

I'm using cakephp1.3, and some assets are themed assets (js, img etc) and others are not themed assets.
Non themed assets are cached correctly; but themed assets are not getting the correct expiration headers. I use rewrites in the location block to help to help find themed assets, but for some reason, nginx then does not apply the correct cache headers.
I have attached a copy of my nginx config below. Has anyone solved how to cache rewritten assets?
user nginx;
worker_processes 2;
error_log /var/log/nginx/error.log;
pid /var/run/nginx.pid;
events {
worker_connections 1024;
}
#-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http {
include /etc/nginx/mime.types;
default_type application/octet-stream;
log_format main '$remote_addr - $remote_user [$time_local] "$request" '
'$status $body_bytes_sent "$http_referer" '
'"$http_user_agent" "$http_x_forwarded_for"';
access_log /var/log/nginx/access.log main;
sendfile on;
#tcp_nopush on;
#keepalive_timeout 0;
keepalive_timeout 65;
fastcgi_cache_path /var/cache/nginx levels=1:2 keys_zone=my_cache:100m inactive=60m;
fastcgi_cache_key "$scheme$request_method$host$request_uri";
# Load modular configuration files from the /etc/nginx/conf.d directory.
# See http://nginx.org/en/docs/ngx_core_module.html#include
# for more information.
include /etc/nginx/conf.d/*.conf;
server {
listen 80;
server_name ag_production;
access_log /var/log/nginx/ag.access.log;
error_log /var/log/nginx/ag.error.log;
rewrite_log on;
root /var/www/html/app/webroot/;
index index.php index.html index.htm;
set $no_cache 0;
location / {
try_files $uri $uri/ #rules;
}
location #rules {
rewrite ^(.+)$ /index.php?url=$1 last;
}
# Pass the PHP scripts to FastCGI server
# listening on 127.0.0.1:9000
location ~ \.php$ {
#try_files $uri =404;
fastcgi_cache my_cache;
fastcgi_cache_valid 200 60m; # Only cache 200 responses, cache for 60 minutes
fastcgi_cache_methods GET HEAD; # Only GET and HEAD methods apply
add_header X-Fastcgi-Cache $upstream_cache_status;
fastcgi_cache_bypass $no_cache; # Don't pull from cache based on $no_cache
fastcgi_no_cache $no_cache; # Don't save to cache based on $no_cache
fastcgi_buffer_size 128k;
fastcgi_buffers 256 4k;
fastcgi_busy_buffers_size 256k;
fastcgi_temp_file_write_size 256k;
# fastcgi_pass unix:/tmp/php-fastcgi.sock;
fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000;
fastcgi_index index.php;
fastcgi_intercept_errors on; # to support 404s for PHP files not found
fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
include fastcgi_params;
}
location ~* \.(?:manifest|appcache|html?|xml|json)$ {
try_files $uri $uri/ #rules;
expires -1;
access_log logs/static.log; # I don't usually include a static log
}
# Feed
location ~* \.(?:rss|atom)$ {
try_files $uri $uri/ #rules;
expires 1h;
add_header Pragma "public";
add_header Cache-Control "public, must-revalidate, proxy-revalidate";
}
# Media: images, icons, video, audio, HTC
location ~* \.(?:jpg|jpeg|gif|png|ico|cur|gz|svg|svgz|mp4|ogg|ogv|webm|htc)$ {
expires 1M;
access_log off;
add_header Pragma "public";
add_header Cache-Control "public, must-revalidate, proxy-revalidate";
try_files $uri $uri/ #rules;
}
# CSS and Javascript
location ~* \.(?:css|js)$ {
try_files $uri $uri/ #rules;
expires 1y;
access_log off;
add_header Pragma "public";
add_header Cache-Control "public, must-revalidate, proxy-revalidate";
}
# Deny access to .htaccess files,
# git & svn repositories, etc
location ~ /(\.ht|\.git|\.svn) {
deny all;
}
}
}

Answer 1

Yes, theme assets are slower in CakePHP, it has been also described here in their official documentation.
The solution is to serve these theme assets through nginx, using try_files.
Here is an example nginx configuration for the above purpose:
# Serve CakePHP plugin assets directly
location ~ /(.+)/(img|css|js|files)/(.*) {
access_log off;
expires 10d;
add_header Cache-Control public;
try_files $uri $uri/ /../plugins/$1/webroot/$2/$3 /../../plugins/$1/webroot/$2/$3 /index.php?url=$uri;
}
(source)