Nginx and Laravel: How to restrict "location" block to from "/" to "/api"? - laravel

Question

I have a Laravel application that I would like to use only for its /api routes. When /, /login, /profile, etc are accessed, I would like nginx to serve the index file located in the base root, /var/www/html/index.html.
Here's my current default.conf. The /api routes work, but it also serves / from the backend, which I don't want.
If I simply change location / to location /api, then the /api routes become inaccessible, and trying to access them returns the index file located in the base root, /var/www/html/index.html. This is the opposite of what I am trying to achieve. Haha.
How can I keep the /api routes accessible, while also preventing / from being served by the backend?
server {
listen 80;
root /var/www/html;
server_name _;
index index.php index.html index.htm;
# API routes should be handled by the backend (Laravel).
##### I want to change the following line from "/" to "/api".
location / {
root /var/www/backend/public;
try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$query_string;
location ~ \.php$ {
fastcgi_split_path_info ^(.+\.php)(/.+)$;
fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php-fpm.sock;
fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
fastcgi_param SCRIPT_NAME $fastcgi_script_name;
fastcgi_index index.php;
include fastcgi_params;
}
}
}

Answer 1

According to your configuration, that should already be happening.
the directive:
try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$query_string;
Will attempt first to locate the static file, and if the static file exists and is not a php file, it will be served by nginx directly. Only if it is a php file will it be served with the php backend.
If you want to prevent .php files from being executed at all, you can modify to separate the / location from the /api location:
location ~ ^/api/.*\.php$ {
fastcgi_split_path_info ^(.+\.php)(/.+)$;
fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php-fpm.sock;
fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
fastcgi_param SCRIPT_NAME $fastcgi_script_name;
fastcgi_index index.php;
include fastcgi_params;
}

Answer 2

I accomplished this, but somewhat inelegantly.
I have 2 location blocks:
location ~ "^(?!/api).*$" matches all routes except those that begin with /api.
location / matches all other routes. The reason that it does not match all routes is simply that nginx matches location blocks with regular expressions first.
Strangely, using a regular expression for the second block to match all routes that do begin with /api did not work. I still don't understand why.
server {
listen 80;
root /var/www/html;
server_name _;
index index.php index.html index.htm;
# All non-API routes should be handled by the frontend.
# Use a regular expression to identify all requests
# that do NOT begin with "/api".
location ~ "^(?!/api).*$" {
root /var/www/frontend/public;
try_files $uri $uri/ /index.html =404;
}
# API routes should be handled by the backend (Laravel).
# (Since regex-based location blocks are matched first,
# this will be a fallback to the above location block).
location / {
root /var/www/backend/public;
try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$query_string;
location ~ \.php$ {
fastcgi_split_path_info ^(.+\.php)(/.+)$;
fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php-fpm.sock;
fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
fastcgi_param SCRIPT_NAME $fastcgi_script_name;
fastcgi_index index.php;
include fastcgi_params;
}
}
}