CakePHP in a subdirectory using nginx (Rewrite rules?) - cakephp

Question

I managed to get this to work a while back, but on returning to the cakephp project I had started it seems that whatever changes I've made to nginx recently (or perhaps a recent update) have broken my rewrite rules.
Currently I have:
worker_processes 1;
events {
worker_connections 1024;
}
http {
include mime.types;
default_type application/octet-stream;
sendfile on;
keepalive_timeout 65;
server {
listen 80;
server_name localhost;
location / {
root html;
index index.php index.html index.htm;
}
location /basic_cake/ {
index index.php;
if (-f $request_filename) {
break;
}
if (!-f $request_filename) {
rewrite ^/basic_cake/(.+)$ /basic_cake/index.php?url=$1 last;
break;
}
}
location /cake_test/ {
index index.php;
if (-f $request_filename) {
break;
}
if (!-f $request_filename) {
rewrite ^/cake_test/(.+)$ /cake_test/index.php?url=$1 last;
break;
}
}
# redirect server error pages to the static page /50x.html
#
error_page 500 502 503 504 /50x.html;
location = /50x.html {
root html;
}
# pass the PHP scripts to FastCGI server listening on 127.0.0.1:9000
#
location ~ \.php$ {
root html;
fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000;
fastcgi_index index.php;
fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
include fastcgi_params;
}
}
server {
listen 8081;
server_name localhost;
root /srv/http/html/xsp;
location / {
index index.html index.htm index.aspx default.aspx;
}
location ~ \.(aspx|asmx|ashx|asax|ascx|soap|rem|axd|cs|config|dll)$ {
fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9001;
fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
include fastcgi_params;
}
}
}
The problem that I have is that the css and images will not load from the webroot. Instead if I visit http://localhost/basic_cake/css/cake.generic.css, I get a page which tells me:
CakePHP: the rapid development php
framework Missing Controller
Error: CssController could not be
found.
Error: Create the class CssController
below in file:
app/controllers/css_controller.php
Notice: If you want to customize this
error message, create
app/views/errors/missing_controller.ctp
CakePHP: the rapid development php
framework
Does anybody have any ideas on how to fix this?
(I posted this on ServerFault, but I have this feeling that not many people check that site in comparison to this one, so I probably shouldn't have bothered...)

Answer 1

There is a much easier way to do this using alias and try_files directives. I've started with a simple configuration with working PHP and added a Cake project in the path /cakeproject on the server:
root /var/www;
index index.php;
location /cakeproject {
alias /var/www/cakeproject/app/webroot;
try_files $uri $uri/ /cakeproject/app/webroot/index.php;
}
location ~ \.htaccess {
deny all;
}
location ~ \.php$ {
fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000;
fastcgi_index index.php;
fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
include /etc/nginx/fastcgi_params;
}
The cake project now works perfectly from http://thedomain.com/cakeproject/

Answer 2

I've managed to solve this by adding App.base parameter to the cakephp configuration instead of using the App.baseUrl (looked the code in dispatcher.php).
So let's say I have the cakephp copy located in /var/www/html/cakeprj and my WWWROOT is /var/www/html:
nginx host configuration
# that's for all other content on the web host
location / {
root /var/www/html;
autoindex off;
index index.php index.html index.htm;
...
}
# that's for cakephp
location /cakeprj {
rewrite ^/cakeprj$ /cakeprj/ permanent;
rewrite ^/cakeprj/(.+)$ /$1 break;
root /var/www/html/cakeprj/app/webroot;
try_files $uri /$uri/ #cakephp;
}
# that's for all other php scripts on the web host
location ~ \.php$ {
root /var/www/html;
fastcgi_pass unix:/var/lib/fcgi/php-fcgi.socket;
...
include /etc/nginx/fastcgi_params;
}
# that's for cakephp execution
location #cakephp {
set $q $request_uri;
if ($request_uri ~ "^/cakeprj(.+)$") {
set $q $1;
}
fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME /var/www/html/cakeprj/app/webroot/index.php;
fastcgi_param QUERY_STRING url=$q;
fastcgi_pass unix:/var/lib/fcgi/php-fcgi.socket;
include /etc/nginx/fastcgi_params;
}
cakephp configuration in app/config/core.php
Configure::write('App.base', '/cakeprj');
Configure::write('App.baseUrl', '/cakeprj/'); // seems like it doesn't matter anymore
...and voila - you get nginx serving cakephp static files correctly, url passing to the cakephp dispatcher correctly and cakephp generating urls correctly as well.
P.S. if your nginx doesn't support try_files I believe its configuration can be rewritten with if condition and another rewrite.

Answer 3

In my case, what I did was the following:
location /cakeproj {
rewrite_log on;
error_log /var/log/nginx/notice.log notice; # just for debuggin
if (-f $request_filename) {
break;
}
# Avoid recursivity
if ($request_uri ~ /webroot/index.php) {
break;
}
rewrite ^/cakeproj$ /cakeproj/ permanent;
rewrite ^/cakeproj/app/webroot/(.*) /cakeproj/app/webroot/index.php?url=$1 last;
rewrite ^/cakeproj/(.*)$ /cakeproj/app/webroot/$1 last;
}
location ~ \.php$ {
fastcgi_split_path_info ^(.+\.php)(/.+)$;
# NOTE: You should have "cgi.fix_pathinfo = 0;" in php.ini
fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php5-fpm.sock;
# Edit listen directive in /etc/php5/fpm/pool.d/www.conf
fastcgi_index index.php;
include fastcgi_params;
}
And it worked!!!
Right now I'm experiencing slowness, but I think is PHP and not nginx related
Cheers

Answer 4

Found a solution:
location /cakeprj {
rewrite ^/cakeprj(.+)$ /cakeprj/app/webroot$1 break;
try_files $uri $uri/ /cakeprj/index.php?$args;
}
where cakeprj is a cakephp directory.
Ref: http://jamesmcdonald.id.au/it-tips/cakephp-in-a-subdirectory-nginx