I've been trying to set up two separate proxy caches, one for logged in users, one for guests. The one for guests had a very long expiry as guest pages don't change much, User pages are very dynamic and expiry is very short.

Using cookies i can tell if a page request is by a user or guest, but I cannot see any easy way to alter the proxy as all the proxy_cache commands can't be put inside an if.

I've managed the following workaround, which works fine but it seems strange i have to use this method when there must be an easier and more straightforward way that i am just not seeing





set $memcached_key "pages:$uri:$cache_key"; ### dummy key, will never exist as i'm not using memcache for nginx
if ($cache_key = "guest"){error_page 404 = @guests;} #set 404 for quest
if ($cache_key != "guest"){error_page 404 = @users;} #set 404 for users
memcached_pass 127.0.01:11220; ## this server is empty, has no keys will ALWAYS return 404


location @users {
proxy_cache users;
proxy_cache_key "$request_uri$cache_key";
proxy_cache_valid 502 504 1m;
proxy_cache_valid any 5m;
proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:10098;
}

location @guests {
proxy_cache guests;
proxy_cache_key "$request_uri$cache_key";
proxy_cache_valid 502 504 1m;
proxy_cache_valid any 60m;
proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:10098;
}