How to do routing without .php extension with nginx and php

Question

Before I start, I know there are many solutions in StackOverflow regarding this issue but they are not working for my case.

I set up a docker container running Nginx instance with PHP. When I enter such URL, myapp.com/somefile without .php at the end, it cannot find the file. I need to browse this URL to make it work myapp.com/somefile.php.

Here is my configuration with Dockerfile and Nginx config.

Dockerfile

FROM php:7.4.8-fpm

RUN apt-get update -y \
    && apt-get install -y nginx

# PHP_CPPFLAGS are used by the docker-php-ext-* scripts
ENV PHP_CPPFLAGS="$PHP_CPPFLAGS -std=c++11"

RUN docker-php-ext-install pdo_mysql \
    && docker-php-ext-install opcache \
    && apt-get install libicu-dev -y \
    && docker-php-ext-configure intl \
    && docker-php-ext-install intl \
    && apt-get remove libicu-dev icu-devtools -y
RUN { \
        echo 'opcache.memory_consumption=128'; \
        echo 'opcache.interned_strings_buffer=8'; \
        echo 'opcache.max_accelerated_files=4000'; \
        echo 'opcache.revalidate_freq=2'; \
        echo 'opcache.fast_shutdown=1'; \
        echo 'opcache.enable_cli=1'; \
    } > /usr/local/etc/php/conf.d/php-opcache-cfg.ini

COPY nginx-site.conf /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default
COPY entrypoint.sh /etc/entrypoint.sh

COPY --chown=www-data:www-data . /var/www/html

WORKDIR /var/www/html

EXPOSE 80 443

ENTRYPOINT ["sh", "/etc/entrypoint.sh"]

nginx-site.conf

server {
    root    /var/www/html;

    include /etc/nginx/default.d/*.conf;

    index index.php index.html index.htm;

    client_max_body_size 30m;

    location / {
        try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php$is_args$args;
    }

    location ~ [^/]\.php(/|$) {
        fastcgi_split_path_info ^(.+?\.php)(/.*)$;
        # Mitigate https://httpoxy.org/ vulnerabilities
        fastcgi_param HTTP_PROXY "";
        fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000;
        fastcgi_index index.php;
        include fastcgi.conf;
    }
}

How can I solve this issue? Any help would be appreciated!

Note: I tried to add this lines of code to the nginx config but i ended up downloading files instead of executing them :

location / {
    try_files $uri $uri.html $uri/ @extensionless-php;
    index index.html index.htm index.php;
}

location ~ \.php$ {
    try_files $uri =404;
}

location @extensionless-php {
    rewrite ^(.*)$ $1.php last;
}

Answer 1

Yes, you cannot force nginx to force serving PHP script via PHP location handler with something like try_files $uri $uri.php .... You can try this config instead (yes, I know that some if blocks are evil, but don't worry, this one isn't):

location / {
    index index.html index.htm index.php;
    try_files $uri $uri.html $uri/ @extensionless-php;
}

location ~ \.php$ {
    # default PHP handler here, e.g.
    fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000;
    include fastcgi_params;
    fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
}

location @extensionless-php {
    if ( -f $document_root$uri.php ) {
        rewrite ^ $uri.php last;
    }
    return 404;
}

If you want to redirect all the not found requests to index.php, use this one instead:

location @extensionless-php {
    if ( -f $document_root$uri.php ) {
        rewrite ^ $uri.php last;
    }
    fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000;
    include fastcgi_params;
    fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root/index.php;
}

---

Update @ 2025.03.05

To make URIs with trailing slashes workable too - e.g., both /somefile and /somefile/ - the named location should be changed as follows:

location @extensionless-php {
    rewrite ^(/.*)/$ $1;
    if ( -f $document_root$uri.php ) {
        rewrite ^ $uri.php last;
    }
    return 404;
}

for the first configuration example, and as follows:

location @extensionless-php {
    rewrite ^(/.*)/$ $1;
    if ( -f $document_root$uri.php ) {
        rewrite ^ $uri.php last;
    }
    break;
    fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000;
    include fastcgi_params;
    fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root/index.php;
}

for the second one.

Note: Only URIs that do not correspond to physical directories under the web server root will be processed with the above configurations.