nginx path based routing - nginx

Question

I would like to to route requests based on a path to two different Angular applications. So when i request http://example.com/admin is routes to one app http://example.com/client routes to the second app. I have the following config but all requests are always sent to the nginx default page. Configuration is as follows:
server {
listen 80 default_server;
listen [::]:80 default_server;
server_name _;
location /admin {
root /home/ubuntu/apps/admin/;
index index.html;
try_files $uri $uri/ /index.html?$args;
}
location /client {
root /home/ubuntu/apps/client;
index index.html;
try_files $uri $uri/ /index.html?$args;
}
}
No other confs are in /etc/nginx/sites-enabled and nginx.conf is default post install on Ubuntu. Any help is appreciated.

Answer 1

You were using the wrong value for the root directive. In both locations the correct value for the root directive is /home/ubuntu/apps, which means you can simplify the configuration by using just one root directive by moving it into the server block.
Of course you can use the alias directive - but as the manual states :
When location matches the last part of the directive’s value ... it is better to use the root directive instead.
The other problem is that your try_files statements are pointing to the wrong index.html file.
For example:
server {
listen 80 default_server;
listen [::]:80 default_server;
root /home/ubuntu/apps;
location /admin {
try_files $uri $uri/ /admin/index.html;
}
location /client {
try_files $uri $uri/ /client/index.html;
}
}
Note that server_name _; is not necessary - see the Server Names document.
Also, index index.html; is not necessary being the default value for the index directive.

Answer 2

It appears that you cannot use multiple root directives but instead need to use alias (Configure nginx with multiple locations with different root folders on subdomain). With that, I would still get 404s until I took off $args from the index.html. After that everything worked fine (don't ask how long it took to figure that out). Working config:
server {
listen 80 default_server;
listen [::]:80 default_server;
server_name _;
index index.html;
location /admin {
alias /home/ubuntu/apps/admin;
try_files $uri /index.html =404;
}
location /client {
alias /home/ubuntu/apps/client;
try_files $uri /index.html =404;
}
}