What mistake did I make in this NGINX config file?

Question

I will not display the entire file. Everything works in this file except the handling of the /client location, which I setup below:

location / {
     # First attempt to serve request as file, then
     # as directory, then fall back to displaying a 404.
     try_files $uri $uri/ =404;
}

location /client {
     alias /var/www/client/dist;
     try_files $uri $uri/ /var/www/client/dist/index.html =404;
}

I am serving a php application from the /var/www/server directory. It properly operates at this time.

From the /var/www/client directory, I have made an Angular2 application. The command ng build --prod --base-href=/client/ builds the application and stores it in the folder /var/www/client/dist/, which has the index file located at /var/www/client/dist/index.html.

A request for a file that exists at /var/www/client/dist/real_file_path.ext should be made to http://host/client/real_file_path.ext, and a request for a file that does not exist, such as http://host/client/non-existant/directory should be directed to /var/www/client/dist/index.html where the application parses the url to route the view and controler.

The log shows that the alias successfully redirects requests from /client to /client/dist, but it serves a 404 instead of serving /var/www/client/dist/index.html.

What is causing the failure?

I clearly don't understand something about alias or try_files.

I have tried using:

try_files $uri $uri/ /client/dist/index.html =404;

This did not correct the issue either.

After each change, I run sudo nginx -s reload. After each change, I verify the performance of the php application.

Answer 1

Thank you to @Tim and @Alexey Ten.

When I saw Alexey Ten's comment on the main post, I was sure that was the answer, so I changed it to try_files $uri $uri/ /client/index.html =404;, but this did not fix the problem.

I had a problem with empty access logs, which I had overlooked before since I had plenty in my error logs, but in an effort to gather more information to update the question as suggested by Tim, I learned that I previously changed the location and format of my access logs.

log_format extlog '$request_time - $status - local time: $time_local; root: $document_root; uri: $document_uri; host: $host; hostname: $hostname; realpath root: $realpath_root; client address: $remote_addr; client port: $remote_port; request filename: $request_filename; method: $request_method; request_uri: $request_uri; scheme: $scheme; server_name: $server_name; server_port: $server_port; server_protocol: $server_protocol; response status: $status; uri: $uri';
access_log /var/log/nginx/long_log.log extlog;

This log format is basically a data-dump of the available variables.

What I noticed when I attempted to copy the logs was this:

0.000 - 200 - local time: 08/Jun/2018:09:19:08 -0700; root: /var/www; uri: /server/Core/js/autocomplete.js; host: sandbox.pediatricheartcenter.org; hostname: sandbox; realpath root: /var/www; client address: 192.168.76.37; client port: 54947; request filename: /var/www/server/Core/js/autocomplete.js; method: GET; request_uri: /server/Core/js/autocomplete.js; scheme: http; server_name: sandbox.pediatricheartcenter.org; server_port: 80; server_protocol: HTTP/1.1; response status: 200; uri: /server/Core/js/autocomplete.js
0.000 - 404 - local time: 08/Jun/2018:09:17:29 -0700; root: /var/www/client/dist; uri: /client/visit/5990653da56b4075bff360efcc52383f20171208090130; host: sandbox.pediatricheartcenter.org; hostname: sandbox; realpath root: /var/www/client/dist; client address: 192.168.76.37; client port: 54706; request filename: /var/www/client/dist/visit/5990653da56b4075bff360efcc52383f20171208090130; method: GET; request_uri: /client/visit/5990653da56b4075bff360efcc52383f20171208090130; scheme: http; server_name: sandbox.pediatricheartcenter.org; server_port: 80; server_protocol: HTTP/1.1; response status: 404; uri: /client/visit/5990653da56b4075bff360efcc52383f20171208090130

Specifically, the root is different for the two requests. This means that alias alters the root for requests in the /client location so that my reference needs to be with respect to this new root.

I changed the try_files to reference /index.html, and now it works!

My final location block appears below:

location /client {
    alias /var/www/client/dist;
    try_files $uri $uri/ /index.html =404;
}