I'm trying to configure nginx to proxy_pass to a hot-test server when a certain cookie is present.

It's expected to work like this:
- accessing /hot will set a cookie hot=1 and redirect to /
- accessing /prod will set the cookie hot=0 and redirect to /
- when there is this cookie hot=1 then the requests should be proxied to the test server
- otherwise regular static and other proxies will take place

What I couldn't do so far:
- an if that has higher priority over a location so static files won't try to be served before the proxy to the test takes place

I managed to make this work doing an internal proxy to isolate my configurations on different server directives more a less like this:

[code]
server {
listen 80;
server_name myserver.com _;
location = /hot {
add_header Set-Cookie "hot=1;Max-Age=3600";
rewrite ^ / redirect;
}
location = /prod {
add_header Set-Cookie "hot=0;Max-Age=3600";
rewrite ^ / redirect;
}
location ^~ /somepage/ {
if ($http_cookie ~* "hot=1") {
proxy_pass http://mytestserver.com;
break;
}
# this is where the hacking begins
proxy_set_header X-Real-Host $host;
proxy_set_header Host somepage;
proxy_pass http://localhost:666;
}
}
server {
listen 666;
server_name somepage;
allow 127.0.0.1;
deny all;
location ^~ /somepage/ {
# here I can peacefully write what I needed before
# but when I try to do so it seems to have priority over the if directive
location ~* /somepage/(.+)\.(css|js)$ {
expires 1h;
alias /path/to/files/$1.$2;
}
location ~* /somepage/(.+)\.(jpg|jpeg|png|gif|bmp|ico|pdf|flv|swf|woff)$ {
expires 7d;
alias /path/to/files/$1.$2;
}
proxy_set_header Host $http_x_real_host;
proxy_pass http://myjavaloadbalancer.com:8080;
}
}
[/code]

That's basically it, there are other locations and details like access_log, but I think the above is the relevant part.
I'd really appretiate a better way to do this.

Regards,
Jan Segre