Missing custom header with django, nginx and gunicorn

In your nginx configuration file (f.e. mysite_nginx.conf) in the server section add this parameter: uwsgi_pass_request_headers on;.

For example:

server {
    # the port your site will be served on
    listen      8000;

    ...

    underscores_in_headers on;
}

And if access to Django goes through uwsgi_pass, you need to add this one parameter uwsgi_pass_request_headers on; in location section.

For example:

location / {
    include     /etc/nginx/uwsgi_params; # the uwsgi_params file you installed
    uwsgi_pass_request_headers on;
    uwsgi_pass  django;
}

I think this is what you need:

log_format combined '$remote_addr - $remote_user [$time_local]  '
                    '"$request" $status $body_bytes_sent '
                    '"$http_referer" "$http_user_agent" "$http_http_token" "$upstream_http_http_token"'

to log what is happening.

You might look deeper into the proxy_set_header section on the upstream proxy module to see how to pass on the headers you need.

You can find the documentation here:

• http://wiki.nginx.org/HttpLogModule
• http://wiki.nginx.org/NginxHttpUpstreamModule
• http://wiki.nginx.org/NginxHttpProxyModule#proxy_set_header
• http://wiki.nginx.org/HttpProxyModule#proxy_pass_request_headers

The last entry seems to indicate that nginx passes most headers by default

If Django is accessed using uwsgi_pass, then in the appropriate location(s) ...

# All request headers should be passed on by default     
# Make sure "Token" response header is passed to user 
uwsgi_pass_header  Token;

If Django is accessed using fastcgi_pass, then in the appropriate location(s) ...

# All request headers should be passed on by default     
# Make sure "Token" response header is passed to user 
fastcgi_pass_header  Token;

If Django is accessed using proxy_pass, then in the appropriate location(s) ...

# All request headers should be passed on by default
# but we can make sure "Token" request header is passed to Django 
proxy_set_header Token $http_token;

# Make sure "Token" response header is passed to user 
proxy_pass_header  Token;

These should help eliminate the possibility that Nginx is not passing things along from your issue.

I didn't find a real answer, but was able to make a workaround. I was having the same problem with RFC standard headers if-none-match and if-modified-since, so my solution is tested for those headers.

Added to my nginx config:

uwsgi_param HTTP_IF_NONE_MATCH $http_if_none_match;
uwsgi_param HTTP_IF_MODIFIED_SINCE $http_if_modified_since;

I cannot explain why nginx refuses to pass these headers to uwsgi by default. This config forces it. Pages generate 304s as appropriate now.

For the original question about the non-standard "token" header, this should do the trick:

uwsgi_param HTTP_TOKEN $http_token;