Nginx [emerg] unknown “0” variable

.htaccessmod-rewritenginx

I've been trying for two days to convert an .htaccess to nginx rewrite the original file looked like this:

# Turn on URL rewriting
RewriteEngine On

RewriteBase //

# Protect hidden files from being viewed
<Files .*>
Order Deny,Allow
Deny From All
</Files>

# Protect application and system files from being viewed
RewriteRule ^(?:application|modules|system)\b.* index.php/$0 [L]

# List of files in subdirectories will not be displayed in the browser
Options -Indexes

# Allow any files or directories that exist to be displayed directly
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d

AddDefaultCharset utf-8
AddCharset UTF-8 .htm .html .txt
AddType "text/html; charset=UTF-8" .htm .html .txt
AddType "text/css; charset=UTF-8" .css
AddType "text/javascript; charset=UTF-8" .js

# Rewrite all other URLs to index.php/URL
RewriteRule .* index.php/$0 [PT]

I have managed to come up with this:

# nginx configuration 
charset utf-8; 
autoindex off; 

location /application {
rewrite ^/(?:application|modules|system)\b.* /index.php/$0 break;
} 
location /modules {
rewrite ^/(?:application|modules|system)\b.* /index.php/$0 break;
}
location /system { 
rewrite ^/(?:application|modules|system)\b.* /index.php/$0 break; 
} 
location / { 
if (!-e $request_filename){ 
rewrite ^(.*)$ /index.php/$0; 
} 
} 
location ~ \.* { 
deny all; 
}

But when I restart nginx I get: 

[emerg] unknown "0" variable
nginx: configuration file /etc/nginx/nginx.conf test failed

I do not understand why this is. Can someone pleas help me with this?

Best Answer

nginx does not have the $0 variable, which is used in Apache for the whole regex pattern match in Apache.

In nginx, you get the equivalent string by using $request_uri.

So, you should use a configuration like this:

charset utf-8;
autoindex off;

location ~ /\.* {
    deny all;
}

location ~ /(?:application|modules|system) {
    return 301 /index.php$request_uri;
}

# Try first the actual files, if they do not exist, then try $request_uri via `index.php`.
try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php/$request_uri;

I also fixed the hidden files regex here.

Related Topic