nginx try_files to rewrite .html into "clean" url

Question

Here's the directory containing static html files

public |-- index.html |-- media | `-- blurred_image-8.jpg |-- post | `-- 13considerations | `-- index.html 

I am attempting to configure nginx to convert all the urls ending with .html to strip out the suffix.

Like this:-

server { listen 80; server_name mysite.com; location / { root /var/www/mysite/public; try_files $uri $uri/ $uri/index.html; } location /media/ { alias /var/www/mysite/public/media/; error_page 404 = /404; expires 30d; } location /static/ { alias /var/www/mysite/public/static/; error_page 404 = /404; expires 30d; } } 

This works properly for the homepage "http://mysite.com/" but if I attempt to access "http://mysite.com/post/13considerations/", I get a 500 internal server error.

What gives?

Answer 1

The example you're using works for returning the contents of a directory's index.html file, but will not work for files (e.g., http://server/somedir/file will not return the contents of /somedir/file.html).

A simplified configuration, which will return any HTML file without its extension and will use index.html for directories is as follows:

server { listen 80; server_name mysite.com; index index.html; root /var/www/mysite/public; location / { try_files $uri $uri/ @htmlext; } location ~ \.html$ { try_files $uri =404; } location @htmlext { rewrite ^(.*)$ $1.html last; } } 

How it works:

• Specifying index index.html will default to using this file when directory URIs are accessed.
• Putting root outside the location block will apply server-wide.
• try_files $uri $uri/ @htmlext will look for an exact match for a file or directory first before finally trying to append .html.
• try_files $uri =404 is to prevent Nginx getting stuck in a rewrite loop if a file can't be found.
• rewrite ^(.*)$ $1.html last appends .html and restarts the URI matching process.