Serving react frontend and flask backend simultaneously (nginx)

Question

I have a react frontend and a flask backend.

Currently I serve backend the following way

server {
    location / {
        try_files $uri @yourapplication;
    }
    location @yourapplication {
        include uwsgi_params;
        uwsgi_pass unix:///tmp/uwsgi.sock;
    }
}

I'd like to configure nginx in a way that would allow me to serve my react app from / and access API from all other routes (i.e. /users is an api endpoint).

Is it a "sensible" set up? What should my config file look like?

Answer 1

Ended up using the following setup

server {

    root /var/www;
    index index.html index.htm;

    location =/ {
        try_files $uri $uri/ /index.html;
    }

    # Media: images, icons, video, audio, HTC
    location ~* \.(?:jpg|jpeg|gif|png|ico|cur|gz|svg|svgz|mp4|ogg|ogv|webm|htc)$ {
        expires 1M;
        access_log off;
        add_header Cache-Control "public";
    }

    # Javascript and CSS files
    location ~* \.(?:css|js)$ {
        try_files $uri =404;
        expires 1y;
        access_log off;
        add_header Cache-Control "public";
    }

    # Any route containing a file extension (e.g. /devicesfile.js)
    location ~ ^.+\..+$ {
        try_files $uri =404;
    }

    location /user {
        try_files $uri @yourapplication;
    }

    location /register {
        try_files $uri @yourapplication;
    }

    location /login {
        try_files $uri @yourapplication;
    }

    location @yourapplication {
        include uwsgi_params;
        uwsgi_pass unix:///tmp/uwsgi.sock;
    }
}

In other words, for production it serves static files on =/ and for every other end ponint passes it to flask.