Improved connector for Nginx proxy to Railo

I have been working with Nginx quite a bit in the last week and I have had a little time to fine-tune my configuration a bit. Here is my stock Railo configuration. I have saved the settings to their own file and include the connector in each separate server configuration that requires Railo. This also remaps the standard Railo administrator to a more secure location and optionally sets basic authentication.

 # /etc/nginx/railo_connector.conf
 # Block default Railo admin
 if ($request_uri ~* ^/railo-context){
  return 404;
 }

 # Hide the Railo Administrator and optionally lock down with password
 location ~ ^/hardtoguesslocation/(.*)$ {
  #auth_basic $host;
  #auth_basic_user_file /path/to/htpasswd;
  if($request_uri ~^/railo-context/admin){
   return 404;
  }
  location ~^/hardtoguesslocation/{
   rewrite ^/hardtoguesslocation/(.*)$ /railo-context/admin/$1 last;
  }
 }

 # Main Railo proxy handler
 location ~ \.(cfm|cfml|cfc|jsp|cfr)(.*)$ {
  proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:8888;
  proxy_redirect off;
  proxy_set_header Host $host;
  proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Host $host;
  proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Server $host;
  proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
  proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
 }

Also, Nginx allows you to use variables in your server configuration so it allows you to easily create a “catch all” virtual host. You can quickly add a new website just by adding it to your server.xml in Railo with no additional configuration required unless you require domain specific rewrites etc. Here is an example server configuration with a default virtual host and a separate domain configured:

server {
 #Catchall vhost
 listen    80; ## listen for ipv4
 server_name _;
 root /var/www/$host;
 index index.cfm;
 access_log  /var/logs/nginx/$host-access.log;
 # Do not log missing favicon.ico errors
 location = /favicon.ico { access_log off; log_not_found off; }
 # Do not serve any .hidden files
 location ~ /\. { access_log off; log_not_found off; deny all; }
 include /etc/nginx/railo_connector.conf;
# End of catch-all Server Configuration
}

server {
 #A domain with custom handling
 listen    80; ## listen for ipv4
 server_name mydomain.com www.mydomain.com;
 root /var/www/mydomain.com;
 index index.cfm;
 access_log  /var/logs/nginx/mydomain.com-access.log;
 # Do not log missing favicon.ico errors
 location = /favicon.ico { access_log off; log_not_found off; }
 # Do not serve any .hidden files
 location ~ /\. { access_log off; log_not_found off; deny all; }
 # Handle FW/1 style SES urls (i.e. http:/domain.com/main/default/key/value)
 location /{
  try_files $uri $uri/ @ses;
 }
 location @ses{
  rewrite ^/index.cfm/$uri last;
 }
 include /etc/nginx/railo_connector.conf;
# End of custom Server Configuration
}

If you want the X-Real-IP reported correctly on the Railo server you will also need to add the RemoteIP valve to your Tomcat configuration.

Overall Nginx makes a very nice front-end to Railo and as always I welcome any comments or suggestions to make it better.