nginx config files redirecting to subfolder - url-rewriting

Question

I'm currently trying to deploy a website in two directories. Despite the lot of documentations on it, I was not able to obtain the behavior that I wish. This is the architecture of the websites :
The main website page is stored in /opt/www/mainsite/index.html
The second webiste (working with CodeIgniter) is stored in /opt/www/apps/myapp/index.php
I wish configure nginx to obtain this behavior :
All requests in http must be redirect to https
www.mydomain.com must point to /opt/www/mainsite/index.html
www.mydomain.com/myapp must point to /opt/www/apps/myapp/index.php
currently, my config file contains :
# redirect http to https
server {
listen 80;
rewrite ^(.*) https://$host$1 permanent;
}
# main webiste
server {
listen 443;
# ssl elements...
root /opt/www/mainsite;
index index.html;
server_name www.mydomain.com;
location / {
try_files $uri $uri/ /index.html;
}
}
On this page I found all the informations to set the config file for CodeIgniter. But I don't know how to create the rules to point mydomain.com/myapp on the CodeIgniter folder and how to configure CodeIgniter in order to set the right configuration.
Is anybody can help me?
thanks in advance

Answer 1

You need http://wiki.nginx.org/HttpFastcgiModule to setup CodeIgniter.
Using 2 server blocks is better than using if block for redirect. See IF is Evil.
Don't use $host because that variable value is obtained from the request's HOST header, and can be easily faked. Always set a server_name directive and use that name instead.
Using "return 301" directive is better than a rewrite. Saving cpu time (regex is slow) and easy to follow. Note that a 302 redirect (rewrite...redirect) has side effect because 302 will turn all POST requests to GET requests, which is not good in your case.
You don't need try_files in the main site because the main site just serves static files. But you can use 'expires' directive to allow browser to cache the static files.
server {
listen 80;
server_name www.mydomain.com;
return 301 https://$server_name$request_uri;
}
server {
listen 443;
server_name www.mydomain.com;
# ssl elements...
location / {
root /opt/www/mainsite;
index index.html;
expires max;
}
location /myapp {
root /opt/www/apps/myapp;
# fastcgi module goes here...
}
}

Answer 2

server {
listen 80;
listen 443 ssl;
…
if ($scheme != "https") {
rewrite ^ https://$server_name$request_uri? redirect;
}
root /opt/www/mainsite/;
location /myapp {
root /opt/www/apps/myapp/;
}
}
You'd put whatever configuration that is necessary for your myapp within the location for myapp.
BTW, it is generally a bad idea to host multiple independent apps within a single Host, because of XSS concerns.