Serve static files from directory depending on http referrer inside of nginx

Question

My server hosts images, but the content of images have to be different for the same link and have to deepens on http referrer.

For example: Website 1 load image website1.jpg from www.example.com/123123/img.jpg
             Website 2 load image website2.jpg from www.example.com/123123/img.jpg

How can i manage do it using NGINX configuration?

UPDATE: I give you guys more details about whole idea:

Images loads on the pages:

www.not_my_website.com/123123/
www.not_my_website.com/456456/
www.not_my_website.com/686667/

I can't access to this site, but there can be images from my site.

<img src="www.example.com/123123/img.jpg"></img>

I need serve others images with the same htlm code based on page ID www.not_my_website.com/ID/).

Thanks for help.

I am not asking is good or not idea. I am asking how. Lucas - ask person who created problem which i must solve :) — user2721435, Oct 02 '14 at 15:41
@user2721435 We are not headless chickens. When someone is completely mistaken, the right way to deal with his question is to show why he's wrong, not by providing a wobbly solution. — Xavier Lucas, Oct 04 '14 at 20:35
It sounds like you're trying to implement hotlink protection. Is this correct? — Ladadadada, Oct 07 '14 at 15:34

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Oct 04 '14 at 18:32

No, that's absurd. You can't do that at the configuration level and there are innumerable reasons it is a horrible idea.

The only way to effect something like that would be to write a CGI application that fetches them based on whatever you want. But, you really should explain why it's a bad idea to break convention like this - imagine the effect of caching proxies, browser caches, and all the other things that assume image content from a GET request is invariant across referrer changes. Also this is totally unsuitable for use as an authorization mechanism since the header can trivially be forged, so I hope that isn't your reasoning.

Serve static files from directory depending on http referrer inside of nginx

1 Answers1