hosting vue.js and codeignitor with nginx

My Updated working code:

server { listen 443; ssl on; ssl_certificate /etc/ssl/website.com.crt; ssl_certificate_key /etc/ssl/website.com.key; server_name website.com; access_log /var/log/nginx/nginx.vhost.access.log; error_log /var/log/nginx/nginx.vhost.error.log; root /var/www/public_html/website.com/dist; index index.php index.html index.htm index.nginx-debian.html; location /api_middleware { alias /var/www/public_html/website.com/api_middleware/; try_files $uri $uri/ /api_middleware/api_middleware/index.php?/$request_uri; client_max_body_size 100M; } location ~ /api_middleware/.+\.php$ { include snippets/fastcgi-php.conf; fastcgi_pass unix:/run/php/php7.2-fpm.sock; fastcgi_read_timeout 300; } } 

The issue was that using multiple root was messing with nginx to access the directory location my second codebase.

I used alias to change the location to search for my 2nd codebase, while using root to set location of my 1st codebase.

Take a look at the line try_files $uri $uri/ /api_middleware/api_middleware/index.php?/$request_uri;. I have added 'api_middleware' twice here, even though the location to index.php file is /var/www/public_html/website.com/api_middleware/index.php . This is needed because of a very old bug in nginx.

finally, to process the php files, I changed the URI where to look for the php files to ~ /api_middleware/.+\.php$.

Reference:

1. NGINX try_files + alias directives
2. https://serverfault.com/questions/1035733/nginx-difference-between-root-and-alias
3. https://serverfault.com/questions/684523/nginx-multiple-roots/684605