nginx php friendly URL redirection without interfe

Question

I've tried so many different configurations to enable permanent redirection of any request ending with .php to redirect to itself without .php.

The issue is, I can't get a rule to redirect requests made to any directory with /index.php to redirect to / instead of /index.

Example:

Desired behavior = /blog/index.php -> /blog/ Current behavior = /blog/index.php -> /blog/index

Is there a clean solution to have any request containing "index.php" to remove itself from the request to simply /, all while still removing .php from all other requests not including index.php?

The two problem lines I can't get to function as desired:

if ($request_uri ~* "^(.*/)index\.php$") { return 301 $1; }
if ($request_uri ~ ^/(.*)\.php$) { return 301 /$1; }

Config:

# Upstream
upstream backend {
server unix:/var/run/php5-fpm.sock;
}

server {
listen 443 ssl;
server_name mysite.net;

# Serving
root /var/www/html/mysite;
charset utf-8;
index index.php;

# Resources
location / {
try_files $uri $uri/ @extensionless-php;
}

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

location ~* /includes/(.+)\.php$ {
deny all;
}

location ~ \.php {
try_files $uri =404;
fastcgi_pass backend;
fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
include fastcgi_params;
}

# Status
location /nginx_status {
stub_status on;
access_log off;
allow 127.0.0.1;
deny all;
}

}

Answer 1

You're likely experiencing the issue with your browser having your prior 301 Moved Permanently redirects in its cache, thus some of your newer code would not be having any effect.

Clear the cache, and try something like this:

index index.php;
if ($request_uri ~ ^/([^?]*?)(?:(?<=/)index(?:\.php)?|\.php)(\?.*)?$) { return 301 /$1$2;   }

The above line supports stripping out not only index.php, but also just index as you might have from your earlier question, as well as just .php, yet it preserves the possible query string from $args, too.

To avoid having support for stripping just index, still supporting the rest of the features as above, use the following instead:

if ($request_uri ~ ^/([^?]*?)(?:(?<=/)index)?\.php(\?.*)?$) {   return 301 /$1$2;   }

P.S. The original explanation of this trick is here: nginx redirect loop, remove index.php from url.