Nginx FastCGI for jpg + gif + png caching

Question

Looking at how nginx-fastCGI can be used for caching in a php app, I see the following

location ~ ^(.+\.php)(.*)$ {
    fastcgi_split_path_info       ^(.+\.php)(.*)$;
    fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME /path/to/php$fastcgi_script_name;
    fastcgi_param PATH_INFO       $fastcgi_path_info;
}

If this were a python app, life would be much simpler, but I don't always get to choose what I work with. I'd like to limit the caching above to only static assets, like .jpg, et. al.

In a python/django world, I could so something like

location /static/$ {
    fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $fastcgi_script_name;
    fastcgi_param PATH_INFO       $fastcgi_path_info;
}

What I think I can do is

location ~ ^(*.jpg|*.png|*.gif)$ {
    fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME /path/to/php$fastcgi_script_name;
    fastcgi_param PATH_INFO       $fastcgi_path_info;
}

One more thing to mention. The static file are not in a single static directory, rather mixed in with other directories..Hence the problem.

Will that work? Anyone have a good way of doing this?

Answer 1

Create a separated location block for the static files:

location ~ ^/(static/) {
    root /path/to/the/static/dir;
    expires max;
}