Nginx alias still points to and loads from root directory

Question

I have a django backend and react frontend.

I want to serve the react on / and use /admin, /api and /auth for Django. Here's what I have in my Nginx.

upstream backend {
    server 127.0.0.1:8000;
}

server {
    listen 80;

    server_name x.x.x.x;
    root /home/user/folder/frontend;
    index index.html index.htm;

    # for serving static
    location /static {
        alias /home/user/folder/backend/staticfiles;
    }

    # for serving react built files
    location / {
        try_files $uri $uri/ /index.html;
    }
    
    # for everything django
    location ~^/(admin|api|auth) {
      include snippets/proxyinfo.conf;
      proxy_pass http://backend;
    }
}

With the above, the expected behavior is

/ uses the default root folder, /home/user/folder/frontend and loads the built index files from react accordingly
/(admin|api|auth) points to django
/static loads static files saved in the /home/user/folder/backend/staticfiles folder.

So not sure why when I hit example.com/static/myfile.css, Nginx is going to /home/user/folder/frontend/static/myfile.css

I'd expect none of the above configuration says that's what it should do, so what magic is going on?

I thought this answer was self explanatory enough, yet Nginx keeps doing whatever it likes.

I'm using nginx/1.18.0 (if that matters)

Looks really weird. What happens if you'd add a trailing slash to both `location` and `alias` directives: `location /static/ { alias /home/user/folder/backend/staticfiles/; }` ? — Ivan Shatsky, Dec 30 '21 at 03:11

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Dec 09 '21 at 12:23

1

Try adding root inside the location / directive too.

Like this:

upstream backend {
    server 127.0.0.1:8000;
}

server {
    listen 80;
    server_name x.x.x.x;
    root /home/user/folder/backend/staticfiles;

    # for serving static
    location /static {
        alias /home/user/folder/backend/staticfiles;
    }

    # for serving react built files
    location / {
        root /home/user/folder/frontend;
        try_files $uri $uri/ /index.html;
    }

    # for everything django
    location ~^/(admin|api|auth) {
      include snippets/proxyinfo.conf;
      proxy_pass http://backend;
    }
}

Also have a look at those QAs:

answered Dec 09 '21 at 12:23

Tom

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1

Thanks for the answer, and the extra resources. Giving it a try to see how it goes – KhoPhi Dec 09 '21 at 18:20
I get this error `"/home/user/folder/backend/staticfiles/index.html" failed (2: No such file or directory)` using your answer – KhoPhi Dec 09 '21 at 18:29
Where do you get the error? When restarting nginx or when accessing an url? Which url? – Tom Dec 09 '21 at 18:32
When accessing the `/` url. And the `/admin` and others show up as not found – KhoPhi Dec 09 '21 at 18:34

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Dec 31 '21 at 23:05

from ngix documentation here, it seems you are missing a / at the end of your paths. this trailing / can cause a lot of pain in many languages to be the root cause of many errors.

please give it a try like this:

# for serving static
    location /static/ {
        alias /home/user/folder/backend/staticfiles/;
    }

Nginx alias still points to and loads from root directory

2 Answers2

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