Laravel - NGINX + Apache reverse proxy 404 on all routes - laravel

Question

i'm setting up a project in Laravel which makes use of a custom vagrant box based on Ubuntu 14.04 and which runs NGINX and Apache in a typical reverse proxy setup.
Now, the issue is that something along the way is not registering the URL path, so when i enter http://mydomain.test/hello what i ultimately get is just a http://mydomain.test/index.php on the other end and it seems to completely forget about the route param.
I'm using Apache 2.4.7 with Mod PHP and the Apache config is as follows.
<VirtualHost 127.0.0.1:8080>
ServerName application.test
ServerAlias www.application.test
DocumentRoot "/home/vagrant/application/public"
ErrorLog /var/log/apache2/error.log
CustomLog /var/log/apache2/access.log combined
<Directory "/home/vagrant/application/public">
Require all granted
AllowOverride all
</Directory>
</VirtualHost>
As indicated Apache is listening on Port 8080 and NGINX is listening on port 80 with the following config.
server {
listen 80;
server_name application.test www.application.test;
root /home/vagrant/application/public;
index index.php index.html;
location / {
try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$is_args$args;
}
location ~ \.php$ {
proxy_pass http://localhost:8080;
proxy_set_header Host $host;
proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme;
}
location ~ /\. {
deny all;
}
}
I can confirm that all Laravel requirements are being fulfilled, so i have MBString, OpenSSL, etc... I can also confirm that the rewrite module is working as i can add a redirect clause to my .htaccess and it does get executed as expected.
This is my .htaccess file.
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
<IfModule mod_negotiation.c>
Options -MultiViews -Indexes
</IfModule>
RewriteEngine On
# Handle Authorization Header
RewriteCond %{HTTP:Authorization} .
RewriteRule .* - [E=HTTP_AUTHORIZATION:%{HTTP:Authorization}]
# Redirect Trailing Slashes If Not A Folder...
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} (.+)/$
RewriteRule ^ %1 [L,R=301]
# Handle Front Controller...
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule ^ index.php [L]
</IfModule>
Am i possibly missing something here? I've configured NGINX and PHP-FPM before but it's my first time doing it with Apache, i've gone through multiple similar questions but none of the proposed fixes has yet worked for me and that's why i ask this question.
Thank you in advance for your help
EDIT
Some progress.
If i set the location config for NGINX as follows
location / {
proxy_pass http://localhost:8080;
proxy_set_header Host $host;
proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme;
}
Then it works, but to the best of my knowledge then this means that even static file requests would end up proxied to Apache.
location ~ \.php$ doesn't seem to work as the laravel pretty url doesn't end with a ".php" suffix i guess. But how would one go about making these two play nice with one another?
The idea i guess is that you have a default location that directs to index.php and when that index.php file is triggered then nginx receives another HTTP request that matches your php location block and will proxy the request to Apache.
The issue is that during this second request, all knowledge of the URI was lost and the URI is now just "index.php" so as far as Apache knows you're always making requests to /index.php.
I still don't know how to fix it though.

Answer 1

So i think i've figured it out, if you have a similar problem, a possible solution is to add the $uri variable to the try_files directive
server {
listen 80;
server_name application.test www.application.test;
root /home/vagrant/application/public;
index index.php index.html;
location / {
try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php$uri;
}
location ~ \.php {
proxy_pass http://localhost:8080;
proxy_set_header Host $host;
proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme;
}
location ~ /\. {
deny all;
}
}
That way, when nginx calls your index.php it'll call it like http://application.test/index.php/hello and this is the URL that Apache ultimately receives and processes through PHP.
So then, .htaccess comes into play, Laravel does it's thing and everything works, and this still only affects PHP files, your static files should still be served directly by NGINX.
If you find anything wrong with this approach please let me know.
UPDATE
A dumb mistake on my end later down the line lead me to believe something else was wrong, every route seemed to display the contents of my "/" root route.
After trying to use Homestead instead of my custom setup i was surprised to find it affected Homestead as well, so it had to be related to my app itself and not the Server.
Basically it was the Exception handler returning the root view because my requests were missing some data required by my FormRequests, after changing my Exception handler class to handle JSON responses it worked as expected.
If you fall into this kind of trap, try to make sure your app works with Homestead, if it does then there's something wrong with your vagrant setup, if not, then it's your Laravel app that's to blame.
If your Exception Handler just does the typical render, then be wary of the fact it'll attempt to redirect to the previous route, which if you're developing an API with Postman will be "/".