Removing the trailing slash from a URL with nginx

Question

I would like the following URLs on my site to be equivalent:

/foo/bar
/foo/bar/
/foo/bar/index.html

and further I would like the second two forms to issue HTTP 301 redirects to the first form. I am just serving static pages, and they are arranged according to the third form. (In other words, when a user requests /foo/bar they should receive the file at /usr/share/.../foo/bar/index.html).

My nginx.conf currently contains the following:

rewrite ^(.+)/$ $1 permanent;
index index.html;
try_files $uri $uri/index.html =404;

This works for requests for /foo/bar/index.html, but when I request /foo/bar or /foo/bar/ Safari tells me that “too many redirects occurred”—I assume there’s an infinite redirect loop or something like that. How can I get nginx to map URLs to files in the way I’ve described?

Edit: My full configuration

Here is my entire nginx.conf with my domain name replaced with “example.com”.

user www-data;
worker_processes 1;
pid /run/nginx.pid;

events {
  worker_connections 768;
}

http {
  sendfile on;
  tcp_nopush on;
  tcp_nodelay on;
  keepalive_timeout 65;
  types_hash_max_size 2048;
  server_tokens off;

  server_names_hash_bucket_size 64;

  include /etc/nginx/mime.types;
  default_type application/octet-stream;

  access_log /var/log/nginx/access.log;
  error_log /var/log/nginx/error.log;

  gzip on;
  gzip_disable "msie6";
  gzip_vary on;
  gzip_proxied any;
  gzip_comp_level 6;
  gzip_buffers 16 8k;
  gzip_http_version 1.1;
  gzip_types text/plain text/css application/json application/x-javascript text/xml application/xml application/xml+rss application/atom+xml text/javascript image/svg+xml;

  server {
    server_name www.example.com;
    listen 80;
    return 301 $scheme://example.com$request_uri;
  }

  server {
    server_name example.com 123.45.67.89 localhost;
    listen 80 default_server;

    # Redirect /foobar/ to /foobar
    rewrite ^(.+)/$ $1 permanent;

    root /usr/share/nginx/www/example.com;
    index index.html;
    try_files $uri $uri/index.html =404;

    error_page 404 /404.html;
    error_page 500 502 503 504 /50x.html;

    location = /50x.html {
      root /usr/share/nginx/html;
    }
  }
}

@MichaelHampton Yes. Requests for `/foo/bar/index.html` should return the file at `/usr/share/nginx/www/foo/bar/index.html` or however it’s set up. All of the paths on the website correspond directly to filesystem paths. — bdesham, May 20 '14 at 19:23
@bdesham I can't reproduce. Here what I get with your config http://paste.ubuntu.com/7501697/ — Alexey Ten, May 22 '14 at 14:52
@AlexeyTen It’s odd that you’re getting something different. Thanks for looking into it. I’ve posted a configuration that ended up working for me. — bdesham, May 22 '14 at 15:31

score 30 · Answer 1 · answered May 11 '15 at 17:54

30

Having this regex on your server block:

rewrite ^/(.*)/$ /$1 permanent;

would redirect all trailing slash URL's to the respective non trailing slash.

answered May 11 '15 at 17:54

Francisco Costa

401
4
5

2

This addresses only part of the question. – bdesham May 11 '15 at 18:15
7

This addresses the full title of the question. – Jivan Jun 28 '16 at 07:43
Alternatively, `rewrite ^(.+)/$ $1 permanent`. – x-yuri Jan 11 '21 at 22:18
Alternatively: `rewrite ^/(.*)/+$ /$1 permanent;` ` – Arthur Ronconi Aug 15 '23 at 13:34

score 17 · Answer 2 · answered Jan 04 '18 at 04:43

17

Never use rewrite:

  location ~ (?<no_slash>.*)/$ {
       return 301 $scheme://$host$no_slash;
  }

answered Jan 04 '18 at 04:43

Eldar Agalarov

279
2
3

3

Can you expand on why you don’t think rewrite is a good idea? – bdesham Jan 06 '18 at 04:50
Read nginx guide: https://www.nginx.com/resources/wiki/start/topics/tutorials/config_pitfalls/ – Eldar Agalarov Jan 07 '18 at 00:58
The reason your links suggests avoiding rewrites is for impoved legibility, not because they can cause unintended side effects. Your answer is far less readable than `rewrite ^(.+)/+$ $1 permanent;` – chrBrd Oct 04 '18 at 12:44
2

This is a good answer, I don't know why it's downvoted. [The article](https://www.nginx.com/resources/wiki/start/topics/tutorials/config_pitfalls/#taxing-rewrites) has a heading "Taxing Rewrites" that explains why `rewrite` can be bad. That's being said, the provided answer does also capture and match the URI, I'm not sure if will improve performance, it needs testing. Use this regex `(?.+)/$` instead to not redirect the home page. – Razor Nov 07 '19 at 04:22
4

Used `.+` to ensure alteast 1 char match to avoid infinite redirects when accessing root `/` path. – Prasanth Jul 17 '20 at 19:38
5

Alternatively, `location ~ ^(.+)/$ { return 301 $1$is_args$args; }`. – x-yuri Jan 11 '21 at 22:17

score 6 · Accepted Answer · answered May 22 '14 at 15:30

6

I was able to get my desired behavior by using this as the final server block in my configuration:

server {
  server_name example.com 123.45.67.89 localhost;
  listen 80 default_server;

  # Redirect /foobar/ and /foobar/index.html to /foobar
  rewrite ^(.+)/+$ $1 permanent;
  rewrite ^(.+)/index.html$ $1 permanent;

  root /usr/share/nginx/www/example.com;
  index index.html;
  try_files $uri $uri/index.html =404;

  error_page 404 /404.html;
  error_page 500 502 503 504 /50x.html;

  location = /50x.html {
    root /usr/share/nginx/html;
  }
}

answered May 22 '14 at 15:30

bdesham

1,725
4
14
22

This doesn't seem to work for me - the `/index.html` URL is answered with HTTP 200 instead of a redirect; the "rewrite" lines are ignored. Is this still current? – Christoph Burschka Feb 13 '18 at 11:39
@ChristophBurschka I think the issue is the line `rewrite ^(.+)/index.html$ $1`. If you change the `.+` to `.*`, I’m guessing that requests for `/index.html` will start being processed. – bdesham May 16 '23 at 20:42

score 2 · Answer 4 · answered Feb 20 '21 at 18:56

2

    location ~ ^(.+)/$ {
      return 301 $scheme://$host$1;
    }

Used this to host sites from Next.js (v9&v10) static site generations where host/url works while host/url/ triggers an Nginx 404.

answered Feb 20 '21 at 18:56

KuN

211
2
10

score 0 · Answer 5 · answered Feb 06 '23 at 22:55

0

#removing trailing slashes at the end of url
if ($request_uri ~ (.*?)(\/+)$ ) {
    return 301 $scheme://$host$1;
}

This rule will remove(redirect tot non-slashed url) any number of trailing slashes in the end of url.

answered Feb 06 '23 at 22:55

Sid

101
1

score 0 · Answer 6 · edited Dec 04 '18 at 06:31

0

if ($request_uri ~ (.*?\/)(\/+)$ ) {
return 301 $scheme://$host$1;
}

This rule will take care of any number of trailing slashes and will retain URL. It will also take care of base URL trailing slashes

edited Dec 04 '18 at 06:31

RalfFriedl

3,108
4
13
17

answered Dec 04 '18 at 04:54

Ashish Amre

1
2

Removing the trailing slash from a URL with nginx

Edit: My full configuration

6 Answers6

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