Change NGINX root location depending on server_name

Question

I'm trying to specify root location depending on server_name using it's variable. I have configuration like this one below:

server {
    listen       80;
    server_name  ~^(host1|host2)\.example\.com$;

    access_log  /var/log/nginx/hosts_access.log main;
    error_log   /var/log/nginx/hosts_error.log;

    if ($server_name = host1.example.com) { 
        set $root_path /var/www/host1; 
    }

    if ($server_name = host2.example.com) { 
        set $root_path /var/www/host2; 
    }

    root $root_path;

    location = /robots.txt { return 200 "User-agent: *\nDisallow: /\n"; }

    location / {
        index  index.html;
        try_files $uri $uri/ /index.html =404;
    }

    location ~* \.(jpe?g|png|gif|ico)$ {
        expires 1h;
        access_log off;
    }

    location ~ /\.(ht|svn|git) {
        deny all;
    }
}

Actually I realize that this configuration can be not properly set, but nginx didn't find any errors with nginx -t command. iIs it possible to make config this way? Should I use $http_host/$host instead $server_name as a variable?

Answer 1

You can change the root by using a variable from the regex.

server {
    listen 80;
    server_name     ~^(?<subdomain>.+)\.example\.com$;

    root /var/www/$subdomain;
    ...
}

If you name your variable in the regex you can use it throughout the server block. This makes it much easier then if statements.