Uploading to nginx using the nginx upload module

This document will describe the process for setting up the jQuery File Upload plugin to work with the nginx upload module (https://github.com/vkholodkov/nginx-upload-module). A lot of the sample configuration is pretty custom (including the jQuery plugin setup), but the result of this setup will allow you to benefit from the following:

• There will be no "middleman" for the upload. You don't need a PHP or Node app running as the back end to receive the file upload - nginx will take care of that. This means you can offload uploading to something else rather than have your web application have to deal with that process and the strain that comes with it.

• You will have support for resumable, chunked uploading configured to support CORS.

• You can use this configuration on any platform, be it PHP, Ruby, Java, or whatever. All that you need is this plugin and nginx compiled with the upload module.

Section 1: Configuring the jQuery file upload plugin

An example of our custom uploader interface can be found using the links below. This specific implementation opts out of using the custom UI plugins and instead favors a much simpler interface.

• The supporting HTML markup: https://gist.github.com/4568859
• The supporting Javascript: https://gist.github.com/4568794

Section 2: Configuring nginx to work with the plugin

Here is an example nginx config file used specifically for the box that will be receiving the uploads via the nginx upload module: https://gist.github.com/5086894.

Section 3: Tying it all together

Benchmarks for the plugin's 'maxChunkSize' and nginx's 'client_body_buffer_size settings': https://gist.github.com/3920385