Nginx won't serve static files (Reverse Proxy + Express API)? - express

Question

I cannot manage to get Nginx to serve my static files. It always gives me 302 errors. I have my static files in a public folder (/home/user/Documents/myapp.com/CURRENT PROJECT/public) and want to serve them when a user goes to the site and requests myapp.com/css/style.css, myapp.com/js/main_script.js... I have the permission but from what I can tell it either can't find the file or ignores it completely and tries to serve them from the API(I can't use express.static anymore).
user www-data;
pid /run/nginx.pid
http {
upstream loadbalance {
least_conn;
server myapp:8003;
}
server {
listen 80;
listen 443 ssl http2;
server_name www.myapp.com;
ssl_certificate /etc/ssl/certs/cert.pem;
ssl_certificate_key /etc/ssl/private/key.pem;
ssl_client_certificate /etc/ssl/certs/cloudflare.crt;
return 301 https://myapp.com$request_uri;
}
server {
root "/home/user/Documents/myapp.com/CURRENT PROJECT/public";
server_name myapp.com;
##
# SSL Settings
##
listen 443 ssl http2;
listen [::]:443 ssl http2;
ssl_certificate /etc/ssl/certs/cert.pem;
ssl_certificate_key /etc/ssl/private/key.pem;
ssl_client_certificate /etc/ssl/certs/cloudflare.crt;
# This would not work
location /css/ {
autoindex on;
}
# This would not work
location ~ \.(css|js|woff|woff2|png|jpg|jpeg|webp|svg|mp3) {
root '/home/user/Documents/app.com/CURRENT PROJECT/public';
gzip_static on;
expires max;
}
#Api
location / {
proxy_http_version 1.1;
proxy_request_buffering off;
proxy_cache_bypass $http_upgrade;
proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
proxy_set_header Connection 'upgrade';
proxy_set_header Host $host;
proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme;
proxy_pass http://loadbalance;
}
}
}

Answer 1

Once you set up the reverse proxy, you should manage with express the routing of the static files.
My settings for the proxy:
location / {
proxy_pass http://localhost:3000;
proxy_http_version 1.1;
proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
proxy_set_header Connection 'upgrade';
proxy_set_header Host $host;
proxy_cache_bypass $http_upgrade;
}