Nginx Configuration for PHP Laravel & ReactJS in Single Site

[scottalanmiller]

Laravel + ReactJS is a super common combination and getting it working right under an Nginx front end can be confusing. Here is a quick config to copy!

server {
    listen 80;
    listen [::]:80;
    server_name app.myserver.com;

    # ---- React SPA ----
    location / {
    	root /var/www/myapp/myfrontend/dist;
    	index index.html;
        try_files $uri /index.html;
    }

    add_header X-Frame-Options "SAMEORIGIN";
    add_header X-Content-Type-Options "nosniff";

    # ---- Map /api/* to Laravel public ----
    location ^~ /api/ {
        root /var/www/myapp/myapi/public/;
	index index.php;
        try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$query_string;
    }

    # ---- PHP under /api/* (MUST use fastcgi.conf, not the snippet) ----
    #location ~ ^/api/.+\.php$ {
    location ~ \.php$ {
        root /var/www/myapp/myapi/public/;

        # Split PATH_INFO (rarely needed by Laravel, but safe)
        fastcgi_split_path_info ^/api/(.+\.php)(/.*)$;

        include fastcgi.conf;                # <-- NOT snippets/fastcgi-php.conf
        fastcgi_pass unix:/run/php/php8.4-fpm.sock;
        fastcgi_index index.php;

	fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
    }

    # Block dotfiles anywhere (SPA + API)
    location ~ /\. { deny all; }
}

[scottalanmiller]

Some assumptions here. First, only configured for port 80, make sure you address TLS somehow (another proxy in front of this or add config here.)

You have a single folder /var/www/myapp in which you have myfrontend containing your ReactJS application and myapi that contains your Laravel application.

Tested with Nginx on Linux.