Serve static html page with nginx based on rails server response - ruby-on-rails

Question

I have 2 html files in /var/files: host1.html and host2.html.
I want nginx serving any of them (as index file) depending on rails response, eg http://localhost - should render host1.html or host2.html.
This is Rails controller:
class HomeController < ApplicationController
def index
response.headers['X-Accel-Redirect'] = 'host1.html'
head :ok
end
end
And nginx config:
upstream app_server {
server 0.0.0.0:3000 fail_timeout=0;
}
server {
listen 8080 default;
location /{
proxy_pass http://app_server;
internal;
root /var/files/;
}
}
This is not working.
If remove internal - request proxied to Rails, but no internal redirect occurs...
Also, i want to serve not only html files - any actually.
Please advice.
Thanks.

Answer 1

I would use something like this
nginx config:
upstream app_server {
server 0.0.0.0:3000 fail_timeout=0;
}
server {
listen 8080 default;
location / {
proxy_pass http://app_server;
}
location /internal/ {
internal;
alias /var/files/;
}
}
Rails controller:
class HomeController < ApplicationController
def index
response.headers['X-Accel-Redirect'] = '/internal/host1.html'
head :ok
end
end
Here we define “virtual” folder /internal/ that will serve static files. When Rails “redirects” to /internal/host1.html nginx will match it to location /internal/, replace /internal/ with /var/files/ (see alias for details) and serve static file /var/files/host1.html. But if user points his browser to /internal/host1.html he will get 404 error due to internal directive.