nginx exclude path from https - php

Question

I am trying to exclude path client and every url that contains client from https, using nginx.
server {
listen 80;
server_name example.com www.example.com;
location / {
return 301 https://www.example.com$request_uri;
}
location /client/ {
try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$query_string;
}
location ~ \.php$ {
include snippets/fastcgi-php.conf;
fastcgi_pass unix:/run/php/php7.0-fpm.sock;
}
location ~ /\.ht {
deny all;
}
}
server {
listen 443 ssl;
server_name example.com www.example.com;
ssl_protocols TLSv1 TLSv1.1 TLSv1.2;
ssl_prefer_server_ciphers on;
ssl_ciphers 'EECDH+AESGCM:EDH+AESGCM:AES256+EECDH:AES256+EDH';
root /var/www/laravel/public;
# Add index.php to the list if you are using PHP
index index.php index.html index.htm;
location / {
# First attempt to serve request as file, then
# as directory, then fall back to displaying a 404.
try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$query_string;
}
location /client/ {
return 301 http://www.example.com$request_uri;
}
# pass the PHP scripts to FastCGI server listening on 127.0.0.1:9000
#
location ~ \.php$ {
include snippets/fastcgi-php.conf;
fastcgi_pass unix:/run/php/php7.0-fpm.sock;
}
# deny access to .htaccess files, if Apache's document root
# concurs with nginx's one
#
location ~ /\.ht {
deny all;
}
location ~ /.well-known {
allow all;
}
location ~* \.(?:ico|css|js|gif|jpe?g|png)$ {
expires 30d;
add_header Vary Accept-Encoding;
access_log off;
}
}
I removed ssl certificate key from second server block.
When i type https://example.com/client, i get redirected to http://www.example.com/client (as expected). I have a simple index.php file inside client folder that is not getting executed. I am seeing too many redirects in browser.

Answer 1

Credit to https://stackoverflow.com/users/4862445/richard-smith
Added root and index statements in first server block.
server {
listen 80;
server_name example.com www.example.com;
root /var/www/laravel/public; #LINE-ADDED
index index.php index.html index.htm; #LINE-ADDED
# other code here ...
}