Serving Large Files in Rails with a Reverse Proxy Server (Nginx)

16-May-2025 121
If your Rails app deals with large files, let a reverse proxy like Nginx or Thruster serve them. In this post, we'll learn how X-Accel-Redirect (or X-Sendfile) header hands off file delivery to Nginx. We'll also read Thruster’s source code to learn how this pattern is implemented at the proxy level.
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