How to setup apache server for React route? - apache

Question

I have my react app running great on my local dev server but it did not work when I dump my production ready files straight into Apache's htdocs directory:
Here is what I have:
/var/www/index.html
/var/www/bundle.js
and I have
DocumentRoot /var/www
in /etc/apache2/sites-available/000-default.conf
The fact is that
1). when I access http://...com/ that routed me to Login page
2). After I clicked a link
<Link to="main"><button>Log In</button></Link>
the content in the browser location field become:
http://...com/main
3). Now if I reload this url (http://...com/main), I got
The requested URL /main was not found on this server
My rounting in React:
<Router history={browserHistory }>
<Route path="/" component={TopContainer}>
<IndexRoute component={Login} />
<Route path='main' component={MainContainer} />
</Route>
</Router>
What else I am missing in the apache configuration?
thanks

Answer 1

Change the VirtualHost configuration (typically found in /etc/httpd/conf.d\vhosts.conf) by adding the following Rewrite* lines:
<VirtualHost *:8080>
ServerName example.com
DocumentRoot /var/www/httpd/example.com
<Directory "/var/www/httpd/example.com">
...
RewriteEngine On
# Don't rewrite files or directories
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -f [OR]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -d
RewriteRule ^ - [L]
# Rewrite everything else to index.html to allow html5 state links
RewriteRule ^ index.html [L]
</Directory>
</VirtualHost>
This tells Apache to serve any files that exist, but if they don't exist, just serve /index.html rather than a 404: not found.
Apache Reference: Configuring Apache Virtual Hosts
react-router History Reference: Configuring Your Server
Complete answer gratefully stolen from here
Edit: 'On' need to be uppercase in current apache version

Answer 2

The above solution works for Ubuntu as well but I have struggled a bit with it so here are the steps necessary to make it work.
Location of the file where you need to place the above mentioned configuration is under
/etc/apache2/sites-enabled
default is
/etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default.conf
Then you need to make sure that RewriteEngine is running (otherwise you will get an error when restarting Apache server).
sudo a2enmod rewrite
Finally, restart Apache server
sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart
Now, it should work.
When you are using default configuration (root of the website is under /var/www/html), then all you need to do is to place
<Directory "/var/www/html">
RewriteEngine on
# Don't rewrite files or directories
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -f [OR]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -d
RewriteRule ^ - [L]
# Rewrite everything else to index.html to allow html5 state links
RewriteRule ^ index.html [L]
</Directory>
to the above mentioned file under <VirtualHost ...>

Answer 3

If you have to use .htaccess and a sub directory then following works for me.
Options -MultiViews
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule ^ index.html [QSA,L]

Answer 4

What worked for me, echoing many of the answers and comments here:
sudo a2enmod rewrite
Open up /etc/apache2/apache2.conf
Paste in this with the path to your root:
<Directory "/var/www/PATH_TO_YOUR_ROOT">
RewriteEngine on
# Don't rewrite files or directories
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -f [OR]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -d
RewriteRule ^ - [L]
# Rewrite everything else to index.html to allow html5 state links
RewriteRule ^ index.html [L]
</Directory>
sudo service apache2 restart
Pasting into the site-specific conf file did not work as earlier answers suggested.

Answer 5

None of the solutions posted so far appear to address the issue where missing ressources incorrectly return 200 instead of 404, which can make debugging when certain files are missing rather annoying.
My solution is to instead watch what type of resource the request expects to recieve, since browsers will ask for HTML when navigating to a page (Firefox asks for text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8) but not when accessing resources after the initial load (JS files imported via <script> or as ES6 modules ask for */*, CSS files ask for text/css,*/*;q=0.1, accessing JSON via the fetch() API will specify application/json, text/plain, */* and so on). By relying on that assumption, one can configure Apache to serve the Single page app when trying to access a non-existent file (such as a route that only works within the Single-page app) without also sending it whenever said SPA asks for a CSS file that has been renamed or a missing JSON file.
EDIT: MDN has a list of common values for the Accept header.
<Directory "/var/www/httpd/example.com">
RewriteEngine on
# Browsers will specifically ask for HTML (among other things) on initial page load
# That is, if the *user* tries to access a *nonexisting* URL, the app is loaded instead
# but if a webpage attempts to load a missing resource it will return 404.
# (You can still go to /myreactapp/favicon.ico, but a missing /myreactapp/favicon.png resource won't return 200)
# if (HTTP_ACCESS.contains('text/html') && file_not_exists(REQUEST_FILENAME))
RewriteCond %{HTTP_ACCEPT} text/html
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule ^ index.html [last]
# Any ressources loaded by index.html should behave correctly (i.e: Return 404 if missing)
RewriteRule ^ - [last]
AllowOverride None
Options FollowSymLinks Multiviews
Require all granted
</Directory>

Answer 6

Thank you! This worked for me.
I am pasting my config if you are serving multiple sites (virtualhost) and also SSL certificates (SSL was made with certbot), with redirect http to https
This setting works on Linode / Ubuntu
yoursite.com-le-ssl.conf
<IfModule mod_ssl.c>
<VirtualHost *:443>
# Admin email, Server Name (domain name), and any aliases
ServerAdmin webmaster#yoursite.com
ServerName yoursite.com
ServerAlias www.yoursite.com
# Index file and Document Root (where the public files are located)
DirectoryIndex index.html index.php
DocumentRoot /var/www/html/yoursite.com/public_html
<Directory "/var/www/html/yoursite.com/public_html">
RewriteEngine on
# Browsers will specifically ask for HTML (among other things) on initial page load
# That is, if the *user* tries to access a *nonexisting* URL, the app is loaded instead
# but if a webpage attempts to load a missing resource it will return 404.
# (You can still go to /myreactapp/favicon.ico, but a missing /myreactapp/favicon.png resource won't return 200)
# if (HTTP_ACCESS.contains('text/html') && file_not_exists(REQUEST_FILENAME))
RewriteCond %{HTTP_ACCEPT} text/html
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule ^ index.html [last]
# Any ressources loaded by index.html should behave correctly (i.e: Return 404 if missing)
RewriteRule ^ - [last]
AllowOverride None
Options FollowSymLinks Multiviews
Require all granted
</Directory>
# Log file locations
LogLevel warn
ErrorLog /var/www/html/yoursite.com/log/error.log
CustomLog /var/www/html/yoursite.com/log/access.log combined
Include /etc/letsencrypt/options-ssl-apache.conf
SSLCertificateFile /etc/letsencrypt/live/yoursite.com/fullchain.pem
SSLCertificateKeyFile /etc/letsencrypt/live/yoursite.com/privkey.pem
</VirtualHost>
</IfModule>

Answer 7

This is what we use at work for our production react app which is using BrowserRouter from react-router:
httpd.conf
<VirtualHost *:3000>
DocumentRoot "/var/www/html"
<Directory /var/www/html/>
Header set Cache-Control "no-cache"
# https://stackoverflow.com/a/34154531/2089675
FallbackResource /index.html
</Directory>
<Directory /var/www/html/static/>
# https://create-react-app.dev/docs/production-build/#static-file-caching
Header set Cache-Control "public, max-age=31536000"
# https://stackoverflow.com/a/54943214/5600537
RequestHeader edit "If-None-Match" '^"((.*)-gzip)"$' '"$1", "$2"'
</Directory>
</VirtualHost>
As you can see most of the comments in there are answers from SO, so I'm just giving back :)
configuration
Place the above file in /usr/local/apache2/conf/httpd.conf.
The config also assumes that you have put the contents of the build folder inside /var/www/html/. If you've placed them elsewhere, then adjust the path accordingly.
ports
The VirtualHost *:3000 part is just for exposing the server's port in the docker container (httpd:buster) used to run it. This is also the same port CRA defaults to in dev. An external proxy is used to manage where the application can be accessed from.
compression
Finally, if you are interested in serving gzipped files you may want to remove the RequestHeader edit line, and then do some more work to make sure .gz files can be served:
ex.
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/html application/javascript

Answer 8

React routing issue fixed on ubantu server
Solution:
Open the file using the console.
If you are using SSL
nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/000-default-le-ssl.conf
Add the following lines
===================================================================================
DocumentRoot /var/www/project
<Directory "/var/www/project">
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_ACCEPT} text/html
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule ^ index.html [last]
RewriteRule ^ - [last]
AllowOverride None
Options FollowSymLinks Multiviews
Require all granted

Answer 9

Solution:
Options -MultiViews
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule ^ index.html [QSA,L]
If you've multiple virtual host then follow these steps
Goto to that VH and open the .htaccess file
add these lines and save it
restart the apache service again so that it can reflect into the settings

Answer 10

Go on this directory
/etc/apache2/sites-available
open File : 000-default.conf
Change its permission : 777
Paste code on bottom of file
RewriteEngine on
# Don't rewrite files or directories
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -f [OR]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -d
RewriteRule ^ - [L]
# Rewrite everything else to index.html to allow html5 state links
RewriteRule ^ index.html [L]
Restart server