# Proxying when a cookie is present

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/proxying-when-a-cookie-is-present/224636>\
**Category:** NGINX\
**Created:** [November 20, 2012, 4:33am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/proxying-when-a-cookie-is-present/224636 "2012-11-20T04:33:18Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![aris](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/258eb7/32.png) [@aris](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/aris)\
**Post date:** [November 20, 2012, 4:33am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/proxying-when-a-cookie-is-present/224636/1 "2012-11-20T04:33:18Z")

</div>

I’m trying to configure nginx to proxy\_pass to a hot-test server when a  
certain cookie is present.

It’s expected to work like this:

- accessing /hot will set a cookie hot=1 and redirect to /
- accessing /prod will set the cookie hot=0 and redirect to /
- when there is this cookie hot=1 then the requests should be proxied to  
the  
test server
- otherwise regular static and other proxies will take place

What I couldn’t do so far:

- an if that has higher priority over a location so static files won’t  
try  
to be served before the proxy to the test takes place

I managed to make this work doing an internal proxy to isolate my  
configurations on different server directives more a less like this:

```auto
server {
    listen 80;
    server_name myserver.com _;
    location = /hot {
        add_header Set-Cookie "hot=1;Max-Age=3600";
        rewrite ^ / redirect;
    }
    location = /prod {
        add_header Set-Cookie "hot=0;Max-Age=3600";
        rewrite ^ / redirect;
    }
    location ^~ /somepage/ {
        if ($http_cookie ~* "hot=1") {
            proxy_pass http://mytestserver.com;
            break;
        }
        # this is where the hacking begins
        proxy_set_header X-Real-Host $host;
        proxy_set_header Host somepage;
        proxy_pass http://localhost:666;
    }
}
server {
    listen 666;
    server_name somepage;
    allow 127.0.0.1;
    deny all;
    location ^~ /somepage/ {
        # here I can peacefully write what I needed before
        # but when I try to do so it seems to have priority over the if
directive
        location ~* /somepage/(.+)\.(css|js)$ {
            expires 1h;
            alias /path/to/files/$1.$2;
        }
        location ~*
/somepage/(.+)\.(jpg|jpeg|png|gif|bmp|ico|pdf|flv|swf|woff)$ {
            expires 7d;
            alias /path/to/files/$1.$2;
        }
        proxy_set_header Host $http_x_real_host;
        proxy_pass http://myjavaloadbalancer.com:8080;
    }
}
```

That’s basically it, there are other locations and details like  
access\_log,  
but I think the above is the relevant part.  
I’d really appretiate a better way to do this.

Posted at Nginx Forum:

> **[Proxying when a cookie is present](https://forum.nginx.org/read.php?2,232993,232993#msg-232993)**
>
> I'm trying to configure nginx to proxy\_pass to a hot-test server when a certain cookie is present. It's expected to work like this: - accessing /hot will set a cookie hot=1 and redirect to / - accessing /prod will set the cookie hot=0 and redirect to...