Nginx Installation Notes

Nginx is a free, open-source, high-performance HTTP server and reverse proxy, as well as an IMAP/POP3 proxy server. Unlike traditional servers, Nginx doesn’t rely on threads to handle requests. Instead it uses a much more scalable event-driven (asynchronous) architecture. This architecture uses small, but more importantly, predictable amounts of memory under load.

The PHP-FPM (FastCGI Process Manager) is usually used to allow Nginx to process PHP files. Nowadays, PHP-FPM is bundled with any Unix PHP distribution. Phalcon + Nginx + PHP-FPM provides a powerful set of tools that offer maximum performance for your PHP applications.

Configuring Nginx for Phalcon

The following are potential configurations you can use to setup nginx with Phalcon:

Basic configuration

Using $_GET['_url'] as source of URIs:

server {
    listen      80;
    server_name localhost.dev;
    root        /var/www/phalcon/public;
    index       index.php index.html index.htm;
    charset     utf-8;

    location / {
        try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?_url=$uri&$args;
    }

    location ~ \.php {
        fastcgi_pass  unix:/run/php-fpm/php-fpm.sock;
        fastcgi_index /index.php;

        include fastcgi_params;
        fastcgi_split_path_info       ^(.+\.php)(/.+)$;
        fastcgi_param PATH_INFO       $fastcgi_path_info;
        fastcgi_param PATH_TRANSLATED $document_root$fastcgi_path_info;
        fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
    }

    location ~ /\.ht {
        deny all;
    }
}

Using $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'] as source of URIs:

server {
    listen      80;
    server_name localhost.dev;
    root        /var/www/phalcon/public;
    index       index.php index.html index.htm;
    charset     utf-8;

    location / {
        try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php;
    }

    location ~ \.php$ {
        try_files     $uri =404;

        fastcgi_pass  127.0.0.1:9000;
        fastcgi_index /index.php;

        include fastcgi_params;
        fastcgi_split_path_info       ^(.+\.php)(/.+)$;
        fastcgi_param PATH_INFO       $fastcgi_path_info;
        fastcgi_param PATH_TRANSLATED $document_root$fastcgi_path_info;
        fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
    }

    location ~ /\.ht {
        deny all;
    }
}