Caddyfile Directives

Directives are functional keywords that appear within site blocks. Sometimes, they may open blocks of their own which can contain subdirectives, but directives cannot be used within other directives unless noted. For example, you can't use basic_auth inside a file_server block, because file_server does not know how to do authentication. However, you may use some directives within special directive blocks like handle and route because they are specifically designed to group HTTP handler directives.

• Syntax
• Directive Order
• Sorting Algorithm

The following directives come standard with Caddy, and can be used in the HTTP Caddyfile:

Syntax

The syntax of each directive will look something like this:

directive [<matcher>] <args...> {
	subdirective [<args...>]
}

The <carets> indicate tokens to be substituted by actual values.

The[brackets] indicate optional parameters.

The ellipses ... indicates a continuation, i.e. one or more parameters or lines.

Subdirectives are typically optional unless documented otherwise, even though they don't appear in [brackets].

Matchers

Most—but not all—directives accept matcher tokens, which let you filter requests. Matcher tokens are usually optional. Directives support matchers if you see this in a directive's syntax:

[<matcher>]

Because matcher tokens all work the same, the various possibilities for the matcher token will not be described on every page, to reduce duplication. Instead, refer to the matcher documentation for a detailed explanation of the syntax.

Directive order

Many directives manipulate the HTTP handler chain. The order in which those directives are evaluated matters, so a default ordering is hard-coded into Caddy.

You can override/customize this ordering by using the order global option or the route directive.

tracing

map
vars
fs
root
log_append
log_skip
log_name

header
copy_response_headers # only in reverse_proxy's handle_response block
request_body

redir

# incoming request manipulation
method
rewrite
uri
try_files

# middleware handlers; some wrap responses
basic_auth
forward_auth
request_header
encode
push
intercept
templates

# special routing & dispatching directives
invoke
handle
handle_path
route

# handlers that typically respond to requests
abort
error
copy_response # only in reverse_proxy's handle_response block
respond
metrics
reverse_proxy
php_fastcgi
file_server
acme_server

Sorting algorithm

For ease of use, the Caddyfile adapter sorts directives according to the following rules:

• Differently named directives are sorted by their position in the default order. The default order can be overridden with the order global option. Directives from plugins do not have an order, so the order global option or the route directive should be used to set one.

• Same-named directives are sorted according to their matchers.

  • The highest priority is a directive with a single path matcher.

    Path matchers are sorted by specificity, from most specific to least specific.

    In general, this is performed by sorting by the length of the path matcher. There is one exception where if the path ends in a * and the paths of the two matchers are otherwise the same, the matcher with no * is considered more specific and sorted higher.

    For example:

    • /foobar is more specific than /foo
    • /foo is more specific than /foo*
    • /foo/* is more specific than /foo*

  • A directive with any other matcher is sorted next, in the order it appears in the Caddyfile.

    This includes path matchers with multiple values, and named matchers.

  • A directive with no matcher (i.e. matching all requests) is sorted last.

• The vars directive has its ordering by matcher reversed, because it involves setting values which can overwrite each other, so the most specific matcher should be evaluated last.

• The contents of the route directive ignores all the above rules, and preserves the order the directives appear within.