How to setup routes with Express and NGINX?

Question

I'm trying to configure an Express server with NGINX as a reverse proxy. NGINX to serve static files, and Express for the dynamic content.

Problem : The normal root link works (website.com) , but when I navigate to (website.com/api), I get a 404 from NGINX

---

This is my server.js :

var express = require("express");
var app = express();
var server = app.listen(process.env.PORT || 5000);

console.log("Server Running");

app.get("/",function(req,res){res.send("HOME PAGE")});

app.get("/api", function(req, res) {
    res.send('API PAGE');
});

---

This is my NGINX Config file:

server {
    listen 80 default_server;
    listen [::]:80 default_server;


    server_name website.com www.website.com;

    location ~ ^/(assets/|images/|img/|javascript/|js/|css/|stylesheets/|flash/|media/|static/|robots.txt|humans.txt|favicon.ico) {
    root /home/foobar/public; #this is where my static files reside
    access_log off;
    expires 24h;
    }

    location / {
        proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
        proxy_redirect off;
        proxy_pass http://localhost:5000;
        proxy_http_version 1.1;
        proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
        proxy_set_header Connection 'upgrade';
        proxy_set_header Host $host;
        proxy_cache_bypass $http_upgrade;

        try_files $uri $uri/ =404;
    }
}

Answer 1

Try to remove this line:

try_files $uri $uri/ =404;

With this directive nginx tries to serve a static file (or directory), and returns 404 if there is no such file.

Answer 2

In my case, the location property inside server is this:

location {
    proxy_pass http://localhost:3000;
    rewrite ^/(.*)$ /$1 break; # --> this helps
}