Nginx config for Angular 4 CLI app

Question

I've been digging through stackoverflow-answers and github issues for hours, however I could not yet find a proper solution for this.

I have an Angular 4 application built with the Angular-CLI. I want to serve this application from an nginx server (inside a Docker container) at http://XYZ:80/angularapp.

In order to have this application-wide base-href I built the app using ng build --base-href /angularapp which adds <base href="/angularapp"> to my index.html in the dist folder.

For the deployment I have copied the contents of dist to /usr/share/nginx/html and my nginx config looks as follows:

server {
    listen       80;
    server_name  localhost;

    location /api {
        # adjust port of backend to desired port
        proxy_pass http://backend:8081;
        proxy_http_version 1.1;
        proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
        proxy_set_header Connection "upgrade";
        proxy_set_header Host $host;
    }

    location / {
        root  /usr/share/nginx/html;
        index  index.html index.htm;
        try_files $uri $uri/ /index.html$is_args$args;
    }
}

This works absolutely fine and I can access the app by going to http://XYZ:80/angularapp or http://XYZ:80/ (will redirect to /angularapp).

Now I tried to link this app from a different domain (e.g. http://my-intranet/app) which should also show the contents of http://XYZ:80/angularapp. However, this is causing an issue as all the assets have the wrong request paths (e.g. http://my-intranet/main.f574d09ce6036fc0840e.bundle.js). Thus, I get an error Uncaught SyntaxError: Unexpected token <.

I tried using the --deploy-url /angularapp and --deploy-url ., that breaks the original app url (http://XYZ:80/angularapp).

Can someone provide help on how to properly configure the nginx locations for this case? Thank you in advance!

Answer 1

When you are using try_files directive of nginx along with the --base-href in angular-cli. it creates a problem.

As when nginx traverses your index.html and sees the link for styles.xxx.bundle.css, inline.xxx.bunble.js, and various other bundles.

As --base-href appends /angularapp/styles.xxx.bundle.css and /angularapp/inline.xxx.bunble.js to the link and nginx tries the location block and try_files directive is executed to redirect the URI to index.html.

That is why you see the

Uncaught SyntaxError: Unexpected token <

To avoid this you should use --deploy-url and make the folder path with same name as the --base-href and --deploy-url such as /usr/share/nginx/html/angularapp/ and copy the dist folder there.

Then the app would work otherwise removing try_files or don't use --base-href