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Is it possible to run both PHP and Node.js application on the same server with Nginx? I use nginx as reverse proxy for node.js while on PHP I use nginx as substitute for Apache web server.

Accepted Answer

asb MOD January 12, 2015

This is definitely possible. It can be implemented by setting up separate server blocks for each app. Check out this tutorial:

How To Set Up Nginx Server Blocks (Virtual Hosts) on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS

At its most basic, you can create a separate block for each. This uses the server_name directive to route requests to example.com to your php app and requests to node.example.com to the node app running on port 2368.

server {
    listen 80 default_server;
    listen [::]:80 default_server ipv6only=on;

    root /usr/share/nginx/html/php;
    index index.php index.html index.htm;

    server_name example.com;

    location / {
        try_files $uri $uri/ =404;
    }

    error_page 404 /404.html;
    error_page 500 502 503 504 /50x.html;
    location = /50x.html {
        root /usr/share/nginx/html;
    }

    location ~ \.php$ {
        try_files $uri =404;
        fastcgi_split_path_info ^(.+\.php)(/.+)$;
        fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php5-fpm.sock;
        fastcgi_index index.php;
        fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
        include fastcgi_params;
    }
}

server {
    listen 80;
    listen [::]:80 ipv6only=on;

    server_name node.example.com;

    root /usr/share/nginx/html/node;
    index index.html index.htm;

    client_max_body_size 10G;

    location / {
        proxy_pass http://localhost:2368;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
        proxy_set_header Host $http_host;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme;
        proxy_buffering off;
    } 
}

If you need to do something a little more complicate, you might also want to check out:

Understanding Nginx Server and Location Block Selection Algorithms

How To Set Up Nginx Server Blocks (Virtual Hosts) on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS

by Justin Ellingwood

Nginx is an incredibly powerful web server and reverse proxy. In this guide, we'll discuss how to set up server blocks on Ubuntu 14.04 in order to server multiple domains from a single server.

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