Understanding Configuration Terms | nginx

This guide will cover the basic structure found in the main Nginx configuration file. The location of this file will vary depending on how you installed the software on your machine. For many distributions, the file will be located at /etc/nginx/nginx.conf. If it does not exist there, it may also be at /usr/local/nginx/conf/nginx.conf or /usr/local/etc/nginx/nginx.conf.

One of the first things that you should notice when looking at the main configuration file is that it appears to be organized in a tree-like structure, defined by sets of brackets (that look like { and }). In Nginx parlance, the areas that these brackets define are called "contexts" because they contain configuration details that are separated according to their area of concern. Basically, these divisions provide an organizational structure along with some conditional logic to decide whether to apply the configurations within.

Because contexts can be layered within one another, Nginx provides a level of directive inheritance. As a general rule, if a directive is valid in multiple nested scopes, a declaration in a broader context will be passed on to any child contexts as default values. The children contexts can override these values at will. It is worth noting that an override to any array-type directives will replace the previous value, not append to it.

Directives can only be used in the contexts that they were designed for. Nginx will error out on reading a configuration file with directives that are declared in the wrong context. The Nginx documentation contains information about which contexts each directive is valid in, so it is a great reference if you are unsure.

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