proxying nginx Express - 404 on static files

Question

Static files of expressjs app perfectly working when I browse the site from my server ip:port, but when the app serves from nginx, static file gives 404 . Here is my nginx conf:

upstream project {
  server localhost:6546;
}

server {
  listen 80;
  server_name example.com;
  access_log  /var/log/nginx/example.com_access.log;
  error_log   /var/log/nginx/example.com_error.log;

  location / {
    proxy_pass http://project/;
    proxy_http_version 1.1;
    proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
    proxy_set_header Connection 'upgrade';
    proxy_set_header Host $host;
    proxy_cache_bypass $http_upgrade;
  }
  location ~* \.(css|js|gif|jpe?g|png)$ {
    expires 168h;

  }

and here is my expressjs code for static:

app.enable('trust proxy');
app.use(favicon(__dirname + '/public/favicon.ico'));
app.use(express.static(__dirname + '/public'));
app.set('view engine', 'ejs');
if (app.get('env') === 'production') {
    app.set('view cache', true);
}

Answer 1

Although express.js has built in static file handling through some connect middleware, you should never use it. Nginx can do a much better job of handling static files and can prevent requests for non-dynamic content from clogging node processes. here is an example of doing this:

http {
    ...
    server {
        ...
        location ~ ^/(images/|img/|javascript/|js/|css/|stylesheets/|flash/|media/|static/|robots.txt|humans.txt|favicon.ico) {
          root /home/ubuntu/expressapp/public;
          access_log off;
          expires max;
        }
        ...
    }
}