How to set up a website's URL properly - angularjs

Question

I'm having trouble to decide how I should do to make my websites urls cleaner. The thing is, it's done with Angular AND Symfony2. Angular providing the front, and Symfony2 providing the api.
Here's my website's structure :
/api
/app => configurations go here
/bin => binaries
/src => your bundles/MVC code
/vendor => Symfony and 3rd party bundles
/web => this is where the web server document root should be pointed to
/front
/api -> Symlink to /api/web in the symfony part, working, but with app.php and app_dev.php
/css -> frontend CSS
/img -> frontend Images
/js -> frontend JS for AngularJS
/lib
/partials -> html templates used by AngularJS
index.html
Now the urls I get are www.project.dev/ which is home, rendered by AngularJS (/front), works perfectly, and www.project.dev/api/app(_dev).php/... rendered in Symfony2 but I want to remove the part :
app(_dev).php
I have two empty .htaccess, in / and in /api, do I need to use them ? Or do I have to use the Angular-route system ?
How am I suppose to do it ?

Answer 1

It's not clear how exactly you have your Symfony application setup, but I would recommend using the default Symfony directory structure, as it will simplify troubleshooting problems. The default directory structure is something like this:
/Symfony
/app => configurations go here
/bin => binaries
/src => your bundles/MVC code
/vendor => Symfony and 3rd party bundles
/web => this is where the web server document root should be pointed to
Since your document root is pointed to /web, you can have directories in there for your public assets, such as your /js, /img, and /css (Or you can look into Assetic, it allows lots of cool things like combining and compressing js or css.). The /web directory also has a .htaccess file included so that the app(_dev).php is removed from the URL.
Your /api can then be built using the standard Symfony routing, controllers, and views. You should read the Symfony routing documentation to get a grasp of how that works. A summary of how this works is:
create the route (ex. /api/users)
point the route to a Controller action (see the docs)
in the controller action, return the desired response
That's how I would recommend you structure your application. But if you would rather stick with the structure that you have, you will need to add a .htaccess file to the /api directory (which I assume points to the /web directory of the Symfony application), and take a look at this post for what the .htaccess file could contain.