So my website has two parts:
1- /api, /oauth and /assets locations are redirected to a laravel app and using a simple proxy_pass to their docker port
2- the web app, which is a react app. We make an image of the web app(so no files are transferred to the server) and run it on a port, say 3000.
This is a summary of my Nginx configuration:
server {
server_name mywebsite.com;
location /api {
proxy_pass http://localhost:8080/api;
proxy_set_header Host $host;
} //the same with other Laravel paths
location / {
proxy_pass http://localhost:3000/;
proxy_set_header Host $host;
proxy_redirect off;
}
}
The problem is if the user goes to a page, say site.com/profile and refreshes it, they get a 404 error. Googling a lot resulted to use try_files .. index.html which works with local files, but not when using proxy_pass and docker images.
More googling had me find a solution that actually worked:
server {
server_name mywebsite.com;
location /api {
proxy_pass http://localhost:8080/api;
proxy_set_header Host $host;
} //the same with other Laravel paths
location / {
proxy_pass http://localhost:3000/;
proxy_set_header Host $host;
proxy_redirect off;
proxy_intercept_errors on;
recursive_error_pages on;
error_page 404 = @rewrite_proxy;
}
location @rewrite_proxy {
rewrite ^/(.*)$ /index.html?$1 break;
proxy_pass http://localhost:3000;
proxy_set_header Host $host;
}
}
It's brilliant and works like a charm. Now the problem is, I'm looking for a solution to give control of ACTUAL 404 errors to the web app, so it can react in different ways depending on the URL. Any suggestions?