nginx: send all requests to a single html page

Question

Using nginx, I want to preserve the url, but actually load the same page no matter what. I will use the url with History.getState() to route the requests in my javascript app. It seems like it should be a simple thing to do?

location / {
    rewrite (.*) base.html break;
}

works, but redirects the url? I still need the url, I just want to always use the same page.

Merrygoround

Thanks for asking this question so the answer was ready for me :-) – Microbe

You were almost there! 'rewrite ^ /base.html break;' should work, as pointed by @kolbyjack – Diphyodont

Answer 1

I think this will do it for you:

location / {
    try_files /base.html =404;
}

Maelstrom

Note -- this will first check for the file requested, and if it's not there, it will serve base.html. So make sure that you've got no old extra files sitting around in your document root directory, or they'll get served directly if queried. – Maelstrom

Using try_files '' /base.html; (empty string as the first argument to try_files) avoids the lookup of a file called $uri. – Hypodermic

try_files '' /base.html; gave me a redirection problem and an internal server error, but modifying it to try_files '' /base.html =404; fixed that, if it helps anyone. – Ringhals

Answer 2

Using just try_files didn't work for me - it caused a rewrite or internal redirection cycle error in my logs.

The Nginx docs had some additional details:

http://nginx.org/en/docs/http/ngx_http_core_module.html#try_files

So I ended up using the following:

root /var/www/mysite;

location / {
    try_files $uri /base.html;
}

location = /base.html {
    expires 30s;
}

Karankaras

try_files '' /base.html =404; (see above) – Precursor

This worked for me, but I actually did not need the location = /base.html { expires 30s } part. – Icy

Answer 3

Your original rewrite should almost work. I'm not sure why it would be redirecting, but I think what you really want is just

rewrite ^ /base.html break;

You should be able to put that in a location or directly in the server.

Sarver

Answer 4

This worked for me:

location / {
    try_files $uri $uri/ /base.html;
}

Afro

For a React application's production build, this works: try_files $uri $uri/ /index.html =404;. Why? Because the build comprises more other files, including static JavaScript and CSS files. – Idolum

@ParamSiddharth What about getting 404 on refresh – Pancratium

How do you handle refreshing problem that gives 404 @Afro – Pancratium

Answer 5

This worked for me:

location / {
    alias /path/to/my/indexfile/;
    try_files $uri /index.html;
}

This allowed me to create a catch-all URL for a javascript single-page app. All static files like css, fonts, and javascript built by npm run build will be found if they are in the same directory as index.html.

If the static files were in another directory, for some reason, you'd also need something like:

# Static pages generated by "npm run build"
location ~ ^/css/|^/fonts/|^/semantic/|^/static/ {
    alias /path/to/my/staticfiles/;
}

Hindenburg

tks, this works for me, but the tailing slash at alias is important – Ceroplastics

Answer 6

The correct way would be:

location / {
    rewrite (.*) base.html last;
}

Using last will make nginx find a new suitable location block according to the result of rewriting.

try_files is also a perfectly valid approach to this problem.

Spile