Nginx rewrite rule/try_files not working together

Question

I have a website I need to move from an Apache server to an Nginx server.

The .htaccess file of this website is as follows

RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^([^/\.]+)/?$ $1.php [L]

This redirects www.example.com/hello to www.example.com/hello.php keeping the original link, but omiting the .php from the end of the url.

I tried to replicate this in my Nginx server block..

location / {
# Check if a file exists, or route it to index.php.
        try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php;
}

rewrite ^/([a-z]+)$ /$1.php last;

The rewrite rule works, redirecting all links to the .php file, but breaks the Nginx try_files rule for searching inside a directory if the file does not exist.

The below admin example link is a folder with an index.php file inside it.

www.example.com/admin

The try_files should redirect this to..

www.example.com/admin/

Since there is no file called admin.php. Instead I get the 'No input file specified' message.

When I remove the rewrite, the try_files works correctly. However the rest of the site does not work without this rewrite rule.

Does anyone know how I can get the try_files and the rewrite to work together?

Thanks

Ben

et071385 et071385 · Accepted Answer · 2017-09-29T11:29:36

I know this may not help, but I look at your use case and I have to wonder how do you know that a request for /admin should go to /admin/ and not /admin.php?

I mean your rewrite rule clearly states that if you receive a request for /[a-z]+ then it should be rewritten to /[a-z]+.php

Yet you want a try_files to push /admin to /admin/ instead?

Looking at your apache rule:

RewriteRule ^([^/\.]+)/?$ $1.php [L]

I see here that you're trying to limit what gets sent to x.php. I don't see any such restrictions in your nginx rewrite.

Nginx rewrite rule/try_files not working together

2 Answers