React Router routes not working on nginx create-react-app

Question

I'm using "react-router-dom": "^4.2.2".

If I test on localhost:3000/second it works perfectly.

When I upload this on ubuntu server with nginx and I try www.website.com, it works . When I try to use www.website.com/second it gives me 404 not found. I'm using create-react-app.

app.js

class TestRoutes extends React.Component{
    constructor(props){
        super(props);
    }
    render(){
        return(<React.Fragment>
            <BrowserRouter>
                <Switch>
                    <Route exact path='/' component={MainPage}/>
                    <Route path='/second' component={SecondPage}/>
                    <Route path='/third' component={ThirdPage}/>
                </Switch>
            </BrowserRouter>
                </React.Fragment>);
    }
}

ReactDOM.render(<TestRoutes/>, document.getElementById("root"));

/etc/nginx/sites-available/default Here's the configuration file from the server

server {
        listen 443 ssl;

    root /var/www/reactcamera/build;

    # Add index.php to the list if you are using PHP
    index index.html index.htm index.nginx-debian.html;
    server_name website.com www.website.com;
    ssl_certificate /etc/letsencrypt/live/website.com/fullchain.pem; # 
    managed by Certbot
    ssl_certificate_key /etc/letsencrypt/live/website.com/privkey.pem; # 
    managed by Certbot


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

Answer 1

The answer is found in this thread React-router and nginx

What I had to do was modify default configuration file in /etc/nginx/sites-available/default to:

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

Answer 2

If you wish to do this in a Dockerfile and run your React app, using nginx please see the below answer.

https://stackoverflow.com/a/61753597/4388776

This fixes the React Router issues where you allow nginx to route traffic coming on different endpoints, directly to you React Application.