alias directive with nested location to catch php files - requests for php files giving 404

Question

I have a directory/web app that is located outside of the web root directory of my site.

Say the site is here:

/var/www/site/htdocs/

And the external app is located here:

/var/www/apps/coolapp/

My question is how can I configure nginx to map/route all requests that are like www.mysite.com/coolapp/* (asterisk being wildcard) to the external location /var/www/apps/coolapp/? For example, www.mysite.com/coolapp/test.php should server /var/www/apps/coolapp/test.php.

I have added an alias directive in production.conf that the main nginx.conf file includes. This worked fine for everything except .php files because there is another location that is catching .php files instead. So I nested a location in with the alias to catch .php files, but now nginx is telling me it can't find the .php files "404 File Not Found". Here is what production.conf currently looks like

server {
    listen 80;
    listen 443 ssl;

    ssl_certificate     /blah/blah/blah;
    ssl_certificate_key /blah/blah/blah;
    ssl_protocols       blah blah blah;
    ssl_ciphers         blahblahblah;
    ssl_prefer_server_ciphers blahblah;

    access_log /var/log/nginx/www.mysite.com-access.log;
    error_log  /var/log/nginx/www.mysite.com-error.log error;

    server_name mysite.com www.mysite.com;
    root /var/www/site/htdocs;

    include conf/magento_rewrites.conf;
    include conf/magento_security.conf;
    include /var/www/site/nginx/*.conf;

    #-------CODE IN QUESTION-------
    location  /coolapp/ {
        alias  /var/www/apps/coolapp/;
        location ~ \.php {
            # Copied from "# PHP Handler" below
            fastcgi_param MAGE_RUN_CODE default;
            fastcgi_param MAGE_RUN_TYPE store;
            fastcgi_param HTTPS $fastcgi_https;
            rewrite_log on;

            # By default, only handle fcgi without caching
            include conf/magento_fcgi.conf;
        }
    }

    # PHP handler
    location ~ \.php {
      ## Catch 404s that try_files miss
      if (!-e $request_filename) { rewrite / /index.php last; }

      ## Store code is defined in administration > Configuration > Manage Stores
      fastcgi_param MAGE_RUN_CODE default;
      fastcgi_param MAGE_RUN_TYPE store;
      fastcgi_param HTTPS $fastcgi_https;
      rewrite_log on;

      # By default, only handle fcgi without caching
      include conf/magento_fcgi.conf;
    }

    # 404s are handled by front controller
    location @magefc {
        rewrite ^(.*) /index.php?$query_string last;
    }

    # Last path match hands to magento or sets global cache-control
    location / {
        ## Maintenance page overrides front controller
        index index.html index.php;
        try_files $uri $uri/ @magefc;
        expires 24h;
    }
}

conf/magento_fcgi.conf looks like this:

fastcgi_pass phpfpm;

## Tell the upstream who is making the request
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_redirect off;

# Ensure the admin panels have enough time to complete large requests ie: report generation, product import/export
proxy_read_timeout 1600s;

# Ensure PHP knows when we use HTTPS
fastcgi_param  HTTPS           $fastcgi_https;

## Fcgi Settings
include                        fastcgi_params;
fastcgi_connect_timeout        120;
fastcgi_send_timeout           320s;
fastcgi_read_timeout           1600s;
fastcgi_buffer_size            128k;
fastcgi_buffers 512            64k;
fastcgi_busy_buffers_size      128k;
fastcgi_temp_file_write_size   256k;
fastcgi_intercept_errors       off;
fastcgi_index  index.php;
fastcgi_param  SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
fastcgi_param  SCRIPT_NAME     $fastcgi_script_name;
# nginx will buffer objects to disk that are too large for the buffers above
fastcgi_temp_path              /tmpfs/nginx/tmp 1 2;
#fastcgi_keep_conn              on; # NGINX 1.1.14
expires                        off; ## Do not cache dynamic content

Does anyone see what I'm doing wrong?

Answer 1

Ah, I figured it out. I needed to change this line

fastcgi_param  SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;

to

fastcgi_param  SCRIPT_FILENAME /var/www/apps$fastcgi_script_name;