converting apache htaccess to nginx - apache

Question

I am trying to convert apache htaccess rule to nginx config but it is not working. Following are the details of rules and nginx config:
.htaccess Rule
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php/$1 [L]
Nginx Config For Above
server {
listen ip_address:80;
server_name www.example.com;
access_log /var/log/nginx/example.com-access.log;
error_log /var/log/nginx/example.com-error.log;
root /var/www/html/example.com/;
index index.php;
location / {
if (!-e $request_filename){
rewrite ^(.*)$ /index.php/$1 break;
}
}
when i access website it opens home page and when i click other menus it gives 404 not found.
Following is the error log:
2015/03/18 05:31:56 [error] 3550#0: *7 open() "/var/www/html/example/index.php//contents.html" failed (20: Not a directory), client:
1.2.3.4, server: www.example.com, request: "GET /contents.html HTTP/1.1", host: "www.example.com", referrer: "http://example.com/"
any ideas???
Shoaib..

Answer 1

Your nginx rewrite is wrong – because of the slash in the end, nginx thinks index.php is a folder. You could do something like:
location / {
if (!-e $request_filename) {
rewrite ^(.*)$ /index.php?url=$1 break;
}
}
And then in your PHP code parse $_REQUEST['url']
Another possibility, many webmasters are doing it this way:
location / {
try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$args;
}
Meaning – try to open a file first (if it exists), try to open a folder (if it exists), last resort – pass it to index.php. $args will contain query string, you can access original URL through $_SERVER.

Answer 2

Issue has been resolved, we enabled following in website's config.php file,
$config['index_page'] = '';
$config['uri_protocol'] = 'REQUEST_URI';
And nginx config as follows,
location / {
try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$args;
}
it worked...
Thanks #Denis and #SuddenHead for your replies.