Azure Webapp NGINX conf not removing .php extension - nginx

Question

I have an issue with my nginx server on Azure app service where I'm trying to remove the .php extension from my URLs but I can't seem to work out why my config isn't working.
I've followed the instructions exactly from here https://azureossd.github.io/2021/09/02/php-8-rewrite-rule with one exception of replacing index.php with $uri.php. I know the startup script (/home/site/startup.sh) works as it breaks my site when I restart the service.
My conf file is:
server {
#proxy_cache cache;
#proxy_cache_valid 200 1s;
listen 8080;
listen [::]:8080;
root /home/site/wwwroot;
index index.php index.html index.htm;
server_name example.com www.example.com;
location / {
index index.php index.html index.htm hostingstart.html;
try_files $uri $uri/ /$uri.php?$args;
}
# redirect server error pages to the static page /50x.html
#
error_page 500 502 503 504 /50x.html;
location = /50x.html {
root /html/;
}
# Disable .git directory
location ~ /\.git {
deny all;
access_log off;
log_not_found off;
}
# Add locations of phpmyadmin here.
location ~ [^/]\.php(/|$) {
fastcgi_split_path_info ^(.+?\.php)(|/.*)$;
fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000;
include fastcgi_params;
fastcgi_param HTTP_PROXY "";
fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
fastcgi_param PATH_INFO $fastcgi_path_info;
fastcgi_param QUERY_STRING $query_string;
fastcgi_intercept_errors on;
fastcgi_connect_timeout 300;
fastcgi_send_timeout 3600;
fastcgi_read_timeout 3600;
fastcgi_buffer_size 128k;
fastcgi_buffers 4 256k;
fastcgi_busy_buffers_size 256k;
fastcgi_temp_file_write_size 256k;
}
}