NGINX configuration for static and PHP files - php

Question

I am trying to configure nginx to serve static and PHP files. The config I have isn't working. I want the following local folder structure:
src/static/ -> contains HTML, CSS, JS, images etc
src/api/ -> contains PHP files for a small REST service
If I visit http://mysite.local I want to be served files from the /static folder. If I visit http://mysite.local/api I want to be served the API PHP files. I want the requests to the api to be re-written and sent to an index.php file.
Some examples:
http://mysite.local/test.html -> served from src/static/test.html
http://mysite.local/images/something.png -> served from src/static/images/something.png
http://mysite.local/css/style.css -> served from src/static/css/style.css
http://mysite.local/api/users -> served from src/api/index.php?users
http://mysite.local/api/users/bob -> served from src/api/index.php?users/bob
http://mysite.local/api/biscuits/chocolate/10 -> served from src/api/index.php?biscuits/chocolate/10
The below config works for static files but not for the api files. I get a 404 error back if I visit one of the API paths.
server {
listen 80;
server_name mysite.local;
access_log /var/log/nginx/mysite.access.log main;
error_log /var/log/nginx/mysite.error.log debug;
location / {
index index.html;
root /var/www/mysite/src/static;
try_files $uri $uri/ =404;
}
location /api {
index index.php;
root /var/www/mysite/src/api;
try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$query_string;
location ~ \.php$ {
try_files $uri = 404;
fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000;
fastcgi_index index.php;
fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
include fastcgi_params;
}
}
}

Answer 1

The initial problem is the root directive in the location /api block, which should not include the location component as this gets appended as part of the URI, so:
location /api {
root /var/www/mysite/src;
...
}
will result in a local path of /var/www/mysite/src/api/index.php when presented with the URI /api/index.php. See this document for details.
The try_files rule does not rewrite the URI as you specify in your example. If you really need the final path of the URI to be presented as a query string to /api/index.php you will need to use rewrite.
The simplest solution (if you do not need to serve static content from that location) is to replace your try_files with:
location /api {
...
rewrite ^/api/(.*)$ /api/index.php?$1 last;
location ~ \.php$ { ... }
}
Otherwise, use a named location:
location /api {
...
try_files $uri $uri/ #rewrite;
location ~ \.php$ { ... }
}
location #rewrite {
rewrite ^/api/(.*)$ /api/index.php?$1 last;
}
See this and this for details.