Python utility to find location match for given URI

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• Included content
• Requirements
• Usage

Introduction

The "location_match_finder" utility searches for a location that matches a given request including sublocation levels. Location search is carried out in accordance with the location block selection algorithm.

Testing was carried out on Nginx version 1.18.0

Included content

• Source code:
  • location_match_finder.py - Script source code
• Test suites:
  • nginx-config-example.conf - An example of the Nginx configuration file format
  • uri.list - List of URIs for script testing
• Algorithms:
  • location_selection_algorithm[LANG].jpg - Block schemes of the location match searching algorithm in different languages

Requirements

To successfully run the "location_match_finder" utility, you must pass the required parameters:

• "--config-file=PATH" - Path to Nginx configuration file containing locations
• "--uri=URI" - Request URI in normalized form for which the search will be performed

To successfully parse the Nginx configuration file, all location directives must be converted to the following format:

• A line with a first-level directive must start with 4 spaces or 1 tab character
• A line with a second-level directive must start with 8 spaces or 2 tab characters
• A line with a third-level directive must start with 12 spaces or 3 tab characters
• All processed directives must be in a single file (include directive are not supported)

See example nginx-config-example.conf

Usage

Example of launching the Utility:

./location_finder.py config-file=tests/nginx-config-example.conf uri=/batchBoomer.xml

The result of the execution will be a hierarchical list of locations traversed during the search for a match

Level 1: /batch
        Level 2: /batchBoom
                Level 3: /batchBoomer
                Level 3: ~ .xml$

And a message showing the final location where the request will be processed

Request [ /batchBoomer.xml ] will be processed by level 3 location [ ~ .xml$ ]