Nginx Location Rewrite: Preventing Further Matching with Last Flag

Using the 'last' flag in your rewrite directive prevents further location matching in Nginx. When 'last' is added, it terminates the current rewrite process and passes the rewritten result to the next processing stage, such as proxy_pass. This ensures your rewritten URI isn't re-evaluated against other location rules.

For example, this configuration matches URLs starting with '/api/' and rewrites them to 'http://backend_server:8080/', then passes them to the proxy server without further location matching:

location /api/ {
  rewrite ^/api/(.*)$ http://backend_server:8080/$1 last;
  proxy_pass http://backend_server:8080;
}

Alternatively, the 'break' flag can also be used to stop the current rewrite process. However, 'break' will stop the entire location processing, preventing any further directives within the location block from executing. 'Last' is more suitable in this scenario as it allows the proxy_pass directive to still process the rewritten URI.

By understanding and implementing the 'last' flag, you can effectively control the behavior of Nginx rewrite rules and ensure efficient routing of your requests.