Return a string using the Nginx container

Question

I am using the Nginx container to host a SPA application in Kubernetes.

Aside from the static files hosted for the SPA app, I also need to host the routes for health checks. So, the route /health/startup needs to return the text healthy when a GET request is sent to it.

I suppose I could just make a folder called "health" and then put a file in it called startup with the text healthy in it. But that seems a bit odd to me. And I worry that if the file structure may get changed and that then my health checks will start failing.

Is there a way, using the Nginx container to return a given value (ie "healthy")when a request comes to a specific route? (And not mess up the rest of my static file serving that is going on.)

Answer 1

Yes you can, in the configuration you are importing for the server, you can just do this:

location /health/startup {
    add_header Content-Type text/plain;
    return 200 'healthy';
}