The HTTP core module

The http module is NGINX's central module; it handles all interactions with clients over HTTP. We already discussed the following aspects of this module in Chapter 2, A Configuration Guide:

• Client directives

• File I/O directives

• Hash directives

• Socket directives

• The listen directive

• Matching a request to a server_name and location directive

We will have a look at the remaining directives in the rest of this section, again divided by type.

The server directive

The server directive starts a new context. We have already seen examples of its usage throughout the book so far. One aspect that has not yet been examined in-depth is the concept of a default server.

A default server in NGINX means that it is the first server defined in a particular configuration with the same listen IP address and port as another server. A default server may also be denoted by the default_server parameter to the listen directive.

The default server is useful to define a set of common directives that will...