Converting Apache .htaccess to Nginx Directives - nginx

Question

I've run my site on Apache for years, and since I've made the transition over to Nginx for speed preference, my htaccess rewrite rules have broken my site.
My site content is served dynamically based on the URL request - here's how my htaccess file looks for / traffic.
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^([a-zA-Z0-9-z\-\_]+)/$ index.php?first_path=$1 [QSA]
This will pass any directory as a first_path param to index.php.
Reading through the Nginx documentation for url restructuring, I can't seem to figure out how to write my requirements.
Any ideas will help.

Answer 1

You may have some luck with online converters like this one, which specifically to your .htaccess will produce:
server {
server_name example.com;
rewrite ^/([a-zA-Z0-9-z\-\_]+)/$ /index.php?first_path=$1;
}
Naturally, you also have to include a "handler" location for PHP processing so a more complete configuration would be:
server {
server_name example.com;
rewrite ^/([a-zA-Z0-9-z\-\_]+)/$ /index.php?first_path=$1;
location ~ \.php$ {
fastcgi_pass unix:/path/to/php-fpm.sock;
fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
include fastcgi_params;
}
}
It's worth noting though, that the creator of NGINX himself, Igor Sysoev, is not in favor of using rewrite directives, dismissing their use to old times when nested locations were not supported.
Nested locations, as per NGINX author allow isolating regular expression thus creating a configuration that is easier to maintain in the future (not necessarily easier to create at first though). So in this case, using nested location, the same config may look like this:
server {
server_name example.com;
location / {
location ~ ^/(?<dir>[a-zA-Z0-9-z\-\_]+)/$ {
fastcgi_pass unix:/path/to/php-fpm.sock;
fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME /path/to/index.php;
fastcgi_param QUERY_STRING first_path=$dir
include fastcgi_params;
}
}
location ~ \.php$ {
fastcgi_pass unix:/path/to/php-fpm.sock;
fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
include fastcgi_params;
}
}