NGINX on URL load static content - nginx

Question

Having the following nginx configuration I try to load static content if url /intern is requested, but what I try it fails in 404. How can I properly setup nginx for this case?
server {
listen 80;
root /var/www/html/public;
index index.php index.html index.htm;
location / {
try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$query_string;
}
location ~ \.php$ {
include fastcgi_params;
#try_files $uri /index.php =404;
fastcgi_split_path_info ^(.+\.php)(/.+)$;
fastcgi_pass php:9000;
fastcgi_index index.php;
fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
}
location = /intern {
autoindex on;
root /var/www/html/public/back;
}
}

Answer 1

In case of the root directive, full path is appended to the root including the location part, whereas in case of the alias directive, only the portion of the path NOT including the location part is appended to the alias.
So for:
location = /intern/ {
autoindex on;
root /var/www/html/public/back;
}
nginx will create the final path to be:
/var/www/html/public/back/intern/*
Assuming you don't have the intern directory inside the .../public/back/ directory, this will result in a 404 error.
If that's the case, you should use the alias directive. Where the location path is dropped before looking for the file at the said location.
try this:
location = /intern/ {
autoindex on;
alias /var/www/html/public/back/; # trailing slash is important here
}
This should result in the path:
/var/www/html/public/back/*