NGINX try_files does not pass to PHP

Question

I have a very simple PHP site:

.  
├── about.php  
├── index.php  
├── project  
│   ├── project_one.php  
│   └── project_two.php  
└── projects.php  

And the following nginx config (only relevant parts shown):

location ~ \.php$ {
    fastcgi_split_path_info ^(.+\.php)(/.+)$;
    fastcgi_pass unix:/path/to/php.sock;
    fastcgi_index index.php;
    include fastcgi_params;
    fastcgi_intercept_errors on;
}

location / {
    index index.php;
    try_files $uri $uri/ $uri.php =404;
}

Hitting the / works as expected. Hitting any of the http://my.site.com/{projects | about | project/*} URLs should use try_files to hit the $uri.php file, and pass it to PHP. But instead, the browser just downloads the PHP file itself.

I can get it to work by adding individual location directives for the above locations, like so:

location /projects {
    try_files $uri $uri/ /$uri.php;
}
location /about {
    try_files $uri $uri/ /$uri.php;
}
location /project {
    try_files $uri $uri/ $uri.php;
}

But this is clearly not the way to do this.

What am I doing wrong???

Answer 1

Per nginx documentation for try_files

Checks the existence of files in the specified order and uses the first found file for request processing; the processing is performed in the current context

so nginx find PHP file and process it in context of location / therefor just serve it as static file. Only last parameter is different, it's not checked but nginx make internal redirect (if it's uri) or return error code (if it's =code). So you need to remove =404 from try_files to have internal redirect. And add try_files to location ~ \.php to make sure that file exists.

location ~ \.php$ {
    try_files $uri =404;
    fastcgi_split_path_info ^(.+\.php)(/.+)$;
    fastcgi_pass unix:/path/to/php.sock;
    fastcgi_index index.php;
    include fastcgi_params;
    fastcgi_intercept_errors on;
}

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