nginx multiple (for now two) php projects via php-fpm in subdirectories using alias

Question

For the love of nginx, I can't wrap my head around this issue.

Desired: I want two simple php projects (wordpress in the long haul) in two sub locations under one server block. Side note: These projects reside in two different directories on the server deployed with capistrano.

Problem: I either end up with a 404, 403 or a direct octet stream download of the index.php. On the latter I seem to hit the correct index.php but it is not passed to the php-fpm block. php-fpm is working and not the issue (tested in other serverblock without sublocations)

I have looked all over the web and have tried gazillions of "working" configs, but its not coming together.

Plan: Below you see a working nginx vhost, hitting the right index.html files in the correct alias directories. Thus I am halfway there.

With your help I would like to adapt the config below, to change the index to index.php and get php working on location /staging and /production.

In the location /production you see one config (commented out) how I tried to get php working.

server { listen 82; listen [::]:82; server_name nginx-web.ch; access_log /var/log/nginx/nginx-web_access.log; error_log /var/log/nginx/nginx-web_error.log; location /staging { alias /var/www/nginx-web1/current; index index.html add_header X-debug-message "Location web1"; } location /production { alias /var/www/nginx-web/current; index index.html add_header X-debug-message "Location web"; #try_files $uri $uri/ /production/index.php; #location ~ \.php$ { # add_header X-debug-message "Location ~ php"; # try_files $uri =404; # fastcgi_split_path_info ^(.+\.php)(/.+)$; # fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php5-fpm.sock; # fastcgi_index index.php; # include fastcgi_params; # fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name; #} } } 

Here is a working server block it tried to adapt for sublocations, without success :(

server { listen 80; listen [::]:80; server_name testdev; access_log /var/log/nginx/wp_access.log; error_log /var/log/nginx/wp_error.log; root /var/www; index index.php; location / { try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$args; } location ~ \.php$ { try_files $uri =404; fastcgi_split_path_info ^(.+\.php)(/.+)$; fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php5-fpm.sock; fastcgi_index index.php; include fastcgi_params; } } 

UPDATE with WORKING CONFIG (gotta <3 serverfault/stackoverflow):

Here is the final working configuration, many thanks to @RichardSmith

server { listen 82; listen [::]:82; server_name nginx-web.ch; access_log /var/log/nginx/nginx-web_access.log; error_log /var/log/nginx/nginx-web_error.log; index index.php; location ^~ /staging/ { alias /var/www/nginx-web1/current/; if (!-e $request_filename) { rewrite ^ /staging/index.php last; } location ~ \.php$ { if (!-f $request_filename) { return 404; } include fastcgi_params; fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $request_filename; fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php5-fpm.sock; } } location /production { alias /var/www/nginx-web/current; if (!-e $request_filename) { rewrite ^ /production/index.php last; } location ~ \.php$ { if (!-f $request_filename) { return 404; } include fastcgi_params; fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $request_filename; fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php5-fpm.sock; } } } 

Answer 1

This pattern works:

location ^~ /prefix/ { alias /path/to/root/; if (!-e $request_filename) { rewrite ^ /prefix/index.php last; } location ~ \.php$ { if (!-f $request_filename) { return 404; } include fastcgi_params; fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $request_filename; fastcgi_pass ...; } } 

Use the ^~ prefix to avoid other regular expression location blocks taking precedence. See this document.

The value of the location and the alias both end with / or neither end with /. See this document.

Avoid using alias and try_files together due to this issue and see this caution on the use of if.

Use $request_filename as the computed value of SCRIPT_FILENAME (as it works with both alias and root).

Always set fastcgi_param after including the fastcgi_params file, to avoid the latter silently overwriting the local value.