<quote who="pepejose">

> -- In the first case X-Accel-Redirect not working because the image is in
> memory? -- If I change the second case to:
>
> header("Content-type: image/jpeg"); header("X-Accel-Redirect: /$image");
> readfile($image);
>
> how can I know if the header X-Accel-Redirect is working?

The X-Accel-Redirect header basically says:

Dear nginx (or some other frontend),

I know you're talking to me with fastcgi or http (proxy), but now I've
figured out that I'm just going to be sending the client a file. You can
do this better than me (by talking directly to the kernel and disk, and
not sending the file over the fastcgi or proxy connection), so here's the
name of the file.

Love,

Backend Application


So, what you want to do in your backend is this:

header("Content-type: image/jpeg");
if ( X_ACCEL_DIRECT ) { // this shoudl configurable in a productised app
header("X-Accel-Redirect: /$image");
exit;
}
readfile($image); // send the image if we're not using X-Accel-Redirect


The initial path should probably be mildly more unique though, so you can
deal with it separately in your nginx configuration. But not necessarily.

Short answer: X-Accel-Redirect is helpful only when the file is on disk.

:-)

- Jeff

--
linux.conf.au 2010: Wellington, NZ http://www.lca2010.org.nz/

"First-born children are less creative but more stable, while last-born
are more promiscuous, says US research." - BBC News, 2005