Basic File Serving

By default, Nginx serves files from its standard web root directory. Placing a file, for instance archive.zip, inside a subfolder such as data/ within the root allows direct access via URL. Navigating to http://yourdomain:8080/data/archive.zip will initiate a download for most file types.

Forcing File Downloads

Certain file formats, like images or PDFs, are rendered directly in the browser instead of being downloaded. To enforce a download prompt, append the Content-Disposition header to the specific location block.

location /data {
    add_header Content-Disposition "attachment;";
}

This ensures that any request targeting the /data path triggers a download action rather than inline rendering.

Modifying the Storage Directory

To serve files from a directory outside the default installation path, modify the root directive within the desired location block. For example, to map requests to the /srv/files directory:

location / {
    root   /srv/files;
    index  index.html index.htm;
}

Complete Configuration Example

Below is a consolidated Nginx configuration demonstrating a file server listening on port 9090, serving custom directories, and enforcing downloads for a specific path.

worker_processes  1;

events {
    worker_connections  1024;
}

http {
    include       mime.types;
    default_type  application/octet-stream;

    sendfile        on;
    keepalive_timeout  65;

    server {
        listen       9090;
        server_name  localhost;

        location / {
            root   /srv/files;
            index  index.html index.htm;
        }

        location /downloads {
            root   /srv/files;
            add_header Content-Disposition "attachment;";
        }

        error_page   500 502 503 504  /50x.html;
        location = /50x.html {
            root   html;
        }
    }
}