Routing requests through index.php with nginx

Question

I'm migrating my server from Apache to Nginx and have this very simple .htaccess rule:

RewriteEngine On

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule ^ index.php [QSA,L]

The idea behind it is to direct every request to a front controller (index.php). I'm trying to do the same with Nginx. I used an online converter to make this Nginx location block:

location / {
    if (!-e $request_filename){
        rewrite ^(.*)$ /index.php break;
    }
}

but when I add it to my site's configuration Nginx just spits out the source code of the PHP file as a download. For reference, here's the entire configuration file:

http://pastebin.com/tyKtM1iB

I know PHP works, as if I remove the location block and make a file with <?php phpinfo(); it works correctly.

Any help would be appreciated.

Answer 1

This is how I route EVERYTHING to index.php, including sub-directory requests, HTTP args, ect.

location / {
    try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$args; #if doesn't exist, send it to index.php
}

location ~ \.php$ {
    include fastcgi_params;
    fastcgi_intercept_errors on;
    # By all means use a different server for the fcgi processes if you need to
    fastcgi_pass   127.0.0.1:9000;
 }

So for example, these get sent to index.php:

http://foo.bar/something/
http://foo.bar/something/?something=1

While these go directly to files

http://foo.bar/someotherphp.php
http://foo.bar/assets/someimg.jpg