Nginx remove php extension and index from url - nginx

Question

Hope someone can help me.
be aware; sorry for possible bad english ;)
I'm trying for hours to setup my configs so my site is accessible without php extension, but will redirect any request with extension and in addition remove the /index from URL.
i have come to the point where every extension will removed and still got parsed by php5-fpm.
here is my current code:
server {
listen 80;
server_name example.com;
root /var/www/example.com;
index index.php;
<<unrelated Modulecode>>
rewrite ^(.*).php(.*)$ $1$2 permanent; # << forces index to be appended, so not exactly wanted
#rewrite ^/index$ / permanent; >> results in infinity loop for indexpage
# location ~ ^(.*)(?<!(index)).php(.*)$ { # << even don't know how to at least except index...gwarz regex x|
# rewrite ^(.*).php(.*)$ $1$2 permanent;
# }
location / {
try_files $uri $uri/ #phprule;
}
location ~ \.php$ {
try_files $uri $uri/ 404;
fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php5-fpm.sock;
fastcgi_index index.php;
fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
include fastcgi_params;
}
location #phprule {
rewrite ^(.*)$ $1.php last;
}
}
the uncommented parts are some desperate trys to get it somehow to work x<
so what i want to accomplish:
example.com/index.php => example.com/
example.com/foo.php => example.com/foo
example.com/some/path/foo.php => example.com/some/path/foo
hope you will get the idea.

Answer 1

Probably found the issue or moved on, but for the benefit of those who come along after, these little changes did the trick for me:
location #phprule {
rewrite ^/(.*)$ "/$1.php" last;
}
/ added to the regex, quotes and a forward slash added to the rewrite string.