So the path matched by location gets appended to the root path.

I put a few pictures in the public folder, created an index.html file, and specified it in the configuration as the default file to load. So if the address a user enters doesn't point directly to a file, index.html opens for them. (You can download the files I used in this example from GitHub.)

If you go to localhost:8000 or 127.0.0.1:8000 in your browser, the index.html file should be shown to you. If you used the files I put on GitHub, you should see something like this in your browser:

If you've installed docker and make: you can download the files for the example above from GitHub. Then go into the 01-serving-static-content folder and run the make up command on the command line. This command runs an nginx via Docker and also applies the configuration we covered in the previous part. Then, on port 8000, at localhost or 127.0.0.1, you should be able to see the image above. When you no longer need nginx, you can run the make down command inside that same folder to have Docker stop and remove it.

The alias Directive and How It Differs From root

There may be times when we want files to be read from exactly the address we specified on disk, with the matched request path appended to the path we specified for the files, but with the part we specified in location removed from it. In such cases, you can use alias instead of root. For example, if a user opens the address below:

We want to load the files from the address below:

 To do this, create a new file with a conf extension and put the settings below inside it:

We changed the port from 8000 to 8001 and used alias instead of root; also, in this example, we only respond to requests sent to the /home address. Now our web server listens for our requests on two ports, 8000 and 8001. Just open localhost:8001/home to see the result. If you click on one of the images you see, you'll notice that even though the address starts with home, the images are read from the correct path.

Showing a List of Files From the Web Server

In the earlier examples, if you go to a path that doesn't exist, you'll get a 404 page. But if you go to a path that does exist, but your address doesn't point to a specific file, you'll get a 403 access forbidden page.

We want a situation where, if the path we requested exists, the list of files and folders inside it is shown to us. To do this, we just need to turn autoindex on.

In the example above, we added autoindex on, which means that if a user goes to an address that exists, instead of 403 access forbidden we show them the list of existing files and folders.

Redirecting From the Web Server

Directing a user from one address or path to another address or path is called a "redirect." 

To redirect, you can use the return directive along with a number and the address you want. For a redirect, the number you specify must be 3xx (greater than or equal to 300 and less than 400); you can search for and read about the HTTP redirect status code. Each code has a specific meaning. If your redirect is meant to be permanent, it's better to use 301, and if it's not permanent, it's better to use 302.

In the example above, we set up a redirect on the / address. If you open any address that doesn't start with /home, your request will be redirected to /home. To understand this better, you can open one of the addresses listed below and see the result:

Listening on Multiple Ports

If you want to set up a server that responds to requests on several ports at once, you have two options: either separate the ports with commas and give them as a list, or write the listen directive once for each port separately.

To specify a range of ports, you can use a hyphen (-). In this approach, you separate the starting and ending port numbers with a hyphen. This way, the starting port, the ending port, and every port in between fall within the desired range.

You can also combine the previous two examples. That is, you can specify one listen for a range of ports you want, and also repeat listen again for another specific port.

You can also see sample code for all the examples we covered in this part on GitHub.

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