Using variables in Nginx location rules

This is many years late but since I found the solution I'll post it here. By using maps it is possible to do what was asked:

map $http_host $variable_name {
    hostnames;

    default       /ap/;
    example.com   /api/;
    *.example.org /whatever/;
}

server {
    location $variable_name/test {
        proxy_pass $auth_proxy;
    }
}

If you need to share the same endpoint across multiple servers, you can also reduce the cost by simply defaulting the value:

map "" $variable_name {
    default       /test/;
}

Map can be used to initialise a variable based on the content of a string and can be used inside http scope allowing variables to be global and sharable across servers.

You could do the opposite of what you proposed.

location (/test)/ {
   set $folder $1;
}

location (/test_/something {
   set $folder $1;
}

You can't. Nginx doesn't really support variables in config files, and its developers mock everyone who ask for this feature to be added:

"[Variables] are rather costly compared to plain static configuration. [A] macro expansion and "include" directives should be used [with] e.g. sed + make or any other common template mechanism." http://nginx.org/en/docs/faq/variables_in_config.html

You should either write or download a little tool that will allow you to generate config files from placeholder config files.

Update The code below still works, but I've wrapped it all up into a small PHP program/library called Configurator also on Packagist, which allows easy generation of nginx/php-fpm etc config files, from templates and various forms of config data.

e.g. my nginx source config file looks like this:

location  / {
    try_files $uri /routing.php?$args;
    fastcgi_pass   unix:%phpfpm.socket%/php-fpm-www.sock;
    include       %mysite.root.directory%/conf/fastcgi.conf;
}

And then I have a config file with the variables defined:

phpfpm.socket=/var/run/php-fpm.socket
mysite.root.directory=/home/mysite

And then I generate the actual config file using that. It looks like you're a Python guy, so a PHP based example may not help you, but for anyone else who does use PHP:

<?php

require_once('path.php');

$filesToGenerate = array(
    'conf/nginx.conf' => 'autogen/nginx.conf',
    'conf/mysite.nginx.conf' => 'autogen/mysite.nginx.conf',
    'conf/mysite.php-fpm.conf' => 'autogen/mysite.php-fpm.conf',
    'conf/my.cnf' => 'autogen/my.cnf',
);

$environment = 'amazonec2';

if ($argc >= 2){
    $environmentRequired = $argv[1];

    $allowedVars = array(
        'amazonec2',
        'macports',
    );

    if (in_array($environmentRequired, $allowedVars) == true){
        $environment = $environmentRequired;
    }
}
else{
    echo "Defaulting to [".$environment."] environment";
}

$config = getConfigForEnvironment($environment);

foreach($filesToGenerate as $inputFilename => $outputFilename){
    generateConfigFile(PATH_TO_ROOT.$inputFilename, PATH_TO_ROOT.$outputFilename, $config);
}


function    getConfigForEnvironment($environment){
    $config = parse_ini_file(PATH_TO_ROOT."conf/deployConfig.ini", TRUE);
    $configWithMarkers = array();
    foreach($config[$environment] as $key => $value){
        $configWithMarkers['%'.$key.'%'] = $value;
    }

    return  $configWithMarkers;
}


function    generateConfigFile($inputFilename, $outputFilename, $config){

    $lines = file($inputFilename);

    if($lines === FALSE){
        echo "Failed to read [".$inputFilename."] for reading.";
        exit(-1);
    }

    $fileHandle = fopen($outputFilename, "w");

    if($fileHandle === FALSE){
        echo "Failed to read [".$outputFilename."] for writing.";
        exit(-1);
    }

    $search = array_keys($config);
    $replace = array_values($config);

    foreach($lines as $line){
        $line = str_replace($search, $replace, $line);
        fwrite($fileHandle, $line);
    }

    fclose($fileHandle);
}

?>

And then deployConfig.ini looks something like:

[global]

;global variables go here.

[amazonec2]
nginx.log.directory = /var/log/nginx
nginx.root.directory = /usr/share/nginx
nginx.conf.directory = /etc/nginx
nginx.run.directory  = /var/run
nginx.user           = nginx

[macports]
nginx.log.directory = /opt/local/var/log/nginx
nginx.root.directory = /opt/local/share/nginx
nginx.conf.directory = /opt/local/etc/nginx
nginx.run.directory  = /opt/local/var/run
nginx.user           = _www