serve static files on nginx: how should I know it works?

Question

good day.

I have a React application on Red Hat server and I have a build/static folder on it (there is no index.html file inside, is it normal?). The task is to make nginx to serve static files on this server.

My config is in conf.d in /etc/nginx folder:

 $ cat my.conf 
server {
    listen 443 http2 ssl;
    listen [::]:443 http2 ssl;
    root /home/***-user/repo/****/frontend/build/static;
    server_name **.***.***.**;
    ssl_certificate /etc/ssl/certs/nginx-selfsigned.crt;
    ssl_certificate_key /etc/ssl/private/nginx-selfsigned.key;
    ssl_dhparam /etc/ssl/certs/dhparam.pem;
    location / {
                proxy_pass http://localhost:8080;
    }
}

I restarted nginx and how should I know that all static files are now served by nginx and are working properly?

Answer 1

You should just move in /home/***-user/repo/****/frontend/build/static the index.html (with the js,css...) of your React application.

I don't know if your nginx config works, personally I use this one

server {
    listen       443 ssl;
    server_name  localhost;
    ssl_certificate    /etc/nginx/ssl/server.crt;
    ssl_certificate_key /etc/nginx/ssl/server.key;

    location / {

        root   /../build/static/;
        index  index.html index.htm;
    }
 }

Answer 2

Well, after doing some research it seems that the way to check if nginx work is to go to our site and switch between links on our site while watching over the network tab. In prev version everytime I visited certain tab it downloaded resources, while now it is downloading resources only on 4-5 switching between tabs (And I don't know why, because I set expires to 15 minutes (expires 15m; in my conf)

Answer 3

On your browser, visit your https link, open chrome developer tools, and you could see the static files served once you are in root path /. All the files inside your, /home/-user/repo/*/frontend/build/static will be served upfront on launching the url.