How to reply with 200 from Nginx, without serving a file?

Solution 1:

Yes, you can

location / {
    return 200 'gangnam style!';
    # because default content-type is application/octet-stream,
    # browser will offer to "save the file"...
    # if you want to see reply in browser, uncomment next line 
    # add_header Content-Type text/plain;
}

Solution 2:

You do need to use a 204 as Nginx will not allow a 200 with no response body. To send a 204 you simply use the return directive to return 204; in the appropriate location.

Solution 3:

If you want to return a formatted html text, without serving a html file:

location \ {
    default_type text/html;
    return 200 "<!DOCTYPE html><h2>gangnam style!</h2>\n";
}

If you want to return a text without html format, as the answer points:

location \ {
    add_header Content-Type text/plain;
    return 200 'gangnam style!';
}

And if you just simply wants to return 200:

location \ {
    return 200;
}

Just to remember: location blocks go inside server blocks. Here's a doc for more info.

P.S.: I have similar configuration (formatted html) runnning on plenty of servers.

Solution 4:

As per status code definitions, I believe you want it to be a 204, and not 200. 200's need to be with a resource in the response, or I'd suspect most sane browsers would get confused by this. The other one you can use is 304, which is for cached content.

http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec10.html

Solution 5:

To complete @Martin Fjordval's answer, be careful if you're using such a configuration to do a healthcheck.

While a 204 HTTP code is semantically perfect for a healthcheck (success indication with no content), some services do not consider it a success.

Namely, I had the issue with Google Cloud Load-balancers.

Tags:

Nginx

Html

Http

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