nginx codeigniter rewrite: Controller name conflicts with directory

Question

I'm trying out nginx and porting my existing apache configuration to nginx. I have managed to reroute the codeigniter url's successfully, but I'm having a problem with one particular controller whose name coincides with a directory in site root.

I managed to make my codeigniter url's work as it did in Apache except that, I have a particular url say http://localhost/hello which coincides with a hello directory in site root. Apache had no problem with this. But nginx routes to this directory instead of the controller.

My reroute structure is as follows

http://host_name/incoming_url => http://host_name/index.php/incoming_url

All the codeigniter files are in site root.

My nginx configuration (relevant parts)

server {

listen   80; ## listen for ipv4; this line is default and implied
#listen   [::]:80 default ipv6only=on; ## listen for ipv6

root /path/to/site/root;
index index.php index.html index.htm;

# Make site accessible from http://localhost/
server_name localhost;

location / {
    # First attempt to serve request as file, then
    # as directory, then fall back to index.html

    index index.php index.html index.htm;

    try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php/$request_uri;

    #apache rewrite rule conversion

    if (!-e $request_filename){
        rewrite ^(.*)/?$ /index.php?/$1 last;
    }

    # Uncomment to enable naxsi on this location
    # include /etc/nginx/naxsi.rules
}

location ~ \.php.*$ {
    fastcgi_split_path_info ^(.+\.php)(/.+)$;
    # NOTE: You should have "cgi.fix_pathinfo = 0;" in php.ini

    # With php5-cgi alone:
    fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000;
    # With php5-fpm:
    #fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php5-fpm.sock;
    fastcgi_index index.php;
    include fastcgi_params;
}

I'm new to nginx and I need help in figuring out this directory conflict with the Controller name. I figured this configuration from various sources in the web, and any better way of writing my configuration is greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

Your problem is that you are telling nginx to check for the existence of the folder before passing it to the main controller

try_files $uri ($uri/) /index.php/$request_uri;
                 |
             this part

You can simply fix it by telling nginx not to look for the folders, just by removing that part

try_files $uri /index.php/$request_uri;

PS : $request_uri already contains a leading /

check the wiki link

So the more correct way is to do

try_files $uri /index.php$request_uri;

PS #2

#apache rewrite rule conversion

if (!-e $request_filename){
    rewrite ^(.*)/?$ /index.php?/$1 last;
}

This part should be removed, the try_files statement already handles this part and does exactly the same.

I also believe that your site will still work after removing this line too

fastcgi_index index.php;

and this

fastcgi_split_path_info ^(.+\.php)(/.+)$;

I never really use these.

And your config is missing a root , I think this is why you needed those lines.

EDIT:

As you mentioned the website doesn't work if the rewrite is removed, I noticed there's a slight difference between the try_files and the rewrite statement, we need to fix the try_files to do the same thing that the rewrite does, so it will changed from this

try_files $uri /index.php$request_uri;

To this

try_files $uri /index.php/?$request_uri;

After that the rewrite should be ok to remove.