variable capture in Nginx location matching

Question

Let's say I have a URL like this: www.example.com/a/b/sth, and I write a location block in Nginx config:

location ^~ /a/b/(?<myvar>[a-zA-Z]+) {     # use variable $myvar here     if ($myvar = "sth") { ... } } 

I hope to be able to use variable $myvar captured from the URL inside the block, however, Nginx keeps telling me this variable is not defined and won't start:

nginx: [emerg] unknown "myvar" variable 

Answer 1

Old thread but I had the same problem...

I think the error isn't related to the PCRE version installed

NGINX doesn't parse your regex if your location tag doesn't start with ~ You need to use something like this

location ~ ^/a/b/(?<myvar>[a-zA-Z]+) {    # use variable $myvar here    if ($myvar = "sth") { ... } }