FastCGI and Nginx - Return HTTP Status

Question

I have a custom FastCGI application behind Nginx and I'm struggling to get Nginx to return anything other than a 200 status code.

I've tried the following:

• Setting fast_cgi_intercept_errors on.

• Returning codes via ApplicationStatus in the EndRequest.

• Returning Errors on the StdError stream.

• Sending any of following headers:

  • "Status: 404 Not Found"

  • "HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found"

  • "X-PHP-Response-Code: 404"

  • "Status: 404 Not Found;"

  • "HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found;"

  • "X-PHP-Response-Code: 404;"

Any help would be great, I'm very stuck.

Answer 1

nginx discards the "HTTP/1.1 304 Not Modified\r\n".

nginx uses (and eats) the Status header.

If my fastcgi program returns the header "Status: 304\r\n".

Then I get this response:

HTTP/1.1 304
Server: nginx/1.6.2
Date: Sat, 21 May 2016 10:49:27 GMT
Connection: keep-alive

As you can see there is no Status: 304 header. It has been eaten by nginx.