convert htaccess rule to nginx server block

Question

I've the following code in .htaccess file for the folder /rest-api inside main root folder.

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)\?*$ /rest-api/index.php?__route__=/$1 [L,QSA]

So, I need to migrate it into nginx server block, I'm trying serveral options but nothing works. The best approach I've found is:

location /rest-api {
   if (!-e $request_filename){
      rewrite ^/(.*)\?*$ /index.php?__route__=/$1;
   }
}

But it downloads a file when it should convert the url. Anybody can help me? Thanks!!

Answer 1

I think your regex is broken, its author means ^(.*)\?.*$ and wants to keep an URI part without the query string. NGINX works with the normalized URI without the query string part, so you can try this one:

location /rest-api {
    try_files $uri $uri/ /rest-api/index.php?__route__=$uri&$args;
}

The only caveat of above config is that it would pass an extra & if an HTTP request doesn't have any query arguments at all. Generally it shouldn't lead to any trouble, but if it is, some more accurate version of config is

location /rest-api {
    set $qsa '';
    if ($args) {
        set $qsa '&';
    }
    try_files $uri $uri/ /rest-api/index.php?__route__=$uri$qsa$args;
}

Update

I'm not very familiar with Apach mod_rewrite, but if you need to use an URI part without the /rest-api prefix as __route__ query argument, try this:

location = /rest-api {
    # /rest-api to /rest-api/ redirect is for safety of the next location block
    rewrite ^ /rest-api/ permanent;
}
location /rest-api/ {
    set $qsa '';
    if ($args) { set $qsa $args; }
    rewrite ^/rest-api(.*)$ $1 break;
    try_files /rest-api$uri /rest-api$uri/ /rest-api/index.php?__route__=$uri$qsa$args;
}