Understanding alias (used as rewrite)

[Edho Arief]

On Wed, Jun 24, 2015 at 3:44 PM, E.B. <emailbuilder88 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Thanks for your ongoing helps! I hope someone
> can advise further
>
>> >> You're probably looking for this
>> >>
>> >> fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME /another/different/path/anotehrscript.php;
>> >
>> > Excellent point! Thanks you!
>> > However, what if the alias was NOT to a php file? Is using
>> > rewrite the only solution - alias not able to working? What
>> > is alias doing to cause 404?
>>
>> This config works for me.
>>
>>   location ~ ^/test {
>>     alias /data/public_html/somefile.php;
>>
>>     include fastcgi.conf;
>>
>>     fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:8900;
>>   }
>
> Yes, I had also got similar to work, but
> only for the exact match uri-- the first
> in my list of possible uris that must work:
>
> /my-long-prefix-goes-here
> /my-long-prefix-goes-herexxx
> /my-long-prefix-goes-here/
> /my-long-prefix-goes-here/filename
>
> I still get 404 for the last 3. That's why
> I thinking it was adding the end of the original
> uri to the alias redirect. but Im not sure.
>

you need the regexp-based alias (as in my example).

> (I used prefix match not regex match but I
> now tried your version with regex and get same
> result)
>
>> Check what your error log says to find out why it returns 404.
>
> Im not getting anything in my log I dont know
> why (access log shows the requested uri but
> I cant find the file not found error). I checked
> php log too and basic nginx error log. I have a
> access and error log set for this domain. Is
> that where the file not found error should be going?
>
>> Also the question mark you put will become part of file name php look
>> for (it'll look for 'file.php?' instead of 'file.php'.
>
> I was using the ? to try and avoid unknown file
> lookups because I thought the part of the uri
> after the matching location prefix was being
> added to the aliased location.  I thought I could
> pass it as a query string to PHP so I could ignore
> it that way.
>
> But you help clarify that it won't work that way
> so I understand partly why I am getting 404, thank
> you.
>
> Part of what is not clear is if/when alias will have
> the rest of the uri after the match prefix added to
> it??  The doc:
>
> http://nginx.org/en/docs/http/ngx_http_core_module.html#alias
>
> says nothing, but it begins to appear to me that if
> you end the aliased location with / then it will have
> the rest of the original uri added to it, but if you
> don't end the alias with / then it will be taken without
> changes.
>
> If that's not right, can someone explain?
>

it depends on the type of locaton. If it's regexp-based alias
(location ~ ^/some/(regexp)), the full path is replaced with whatever
in alias params but otherwise the trailing request uri (the one after
path specified in location) will be appended to the alias.