Apache and Nginx configurations

1. Apache ¶

Yii is ready to work with a default Apache web server configuration. The .htaccess files in Yii framework and application folders restrict access to the restricted resources. To hide the bootstrap file (usually index.php) in your URLs you can add mod_rewrite instructions to the .htaccess file in your document root or to the virtual host configuration:

RewriteEngine on

# prevent httpd from serving dotfiles (.htaccess, .svn, .git, etc.)
RedirectMatch 403 /\..*$
# if a directory or a file exists, use it directly
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
# otherwise forward it to index.php
RewriteRule . index.php

2. Nginx ¶

You can use Yii with Nginx and PHP with FPM SAPI. Here is a sample host configuration. It defines the bootstrap file and makes yii catch all requests to unexisting files, which allows us to have nice-looking URLs.

server {
    set $host_path "/www/mysite";
    access_log  /www/mysite/log/access.log  main;

    server_name  mysite;
    root   $host_path/htdocs;
    set $yii_bootstrap "index.php";

    charset utf-8;

    location / {
        index  index.html $yii_bootstrap;
        try_files $uri $uri/ /$yii_bootstrap?$args;
    }

    location ~ ^/(protected|framework|themes/\w+/views) {
        deny  all;
    }

    #avoid processing of calls to unexisting static files by yii
    location ~ \.(js|css|png|jpg|gif|swf|ico|pdf|mov|fla|zip|rar)$ {
        try_files $uri =404;
    }

    # pass the PHP scripts to FastCGI server listening on 127.0.0.1:9000
    #
    location ~ \.php {
        fastcgi_split_path_info  ^(.+\.php)(.*)$;

        #let yii catch the calls to unexising PHP files
        set $fsn /$yii_bootstrap;
        if (-f $document_root$fastcgi_script_name){
            set $fsn $fastcgi_script_name;
        }

        fastcgi_pass   127.0.0.1:9000;
        include fastcgi_params;
        fastcgi_param  SCRIPT_FILENAME  $document_root$fsn;

        #PATH_INFO and PATH_TRANSLATED can be omitted, but RFC 3875 specifies them for CGI
        fastcgi_param  PATH_INFO        $fastcgi_path_info;
        fastcgi_param  PATH_TRANSLATED  $document_root$fsn;
    }

    # prevent nginx from serving dotfiles (.htaccess, .svn, .git, etc.)
    location ~ /\. {
        deny all;
        access_log off;
        log_not_found off;
    }
}

Using this configuration you can set cgi.fix_pathinfo=0 in php.ini to avoid many unnecessary system stat() calls.

3. NGINX Unit ¶

You can run Yii-based apps using NGINX Unit with a PHP language module. Here is a sample configuration.

{
    "listeners": {
        "*:80": {
            "pass": "routes/yii"
        }
    },

    "routes": {
        "yii": [
            {
                "match": {
                    "uri": [
                        "!/assets/*",
                        "!/protected/*",
                        "!/themes/*",
                        "*.php",
                        "*.php/*"
                    ]
                },

                "action": {
                    "pass": "applications/yii/direct"
                }
            },
            {
                "action": {
                    "share": "/path/to/app/",
                    "fallback": {
                        "pass": "applications/yii/index"
                    }
                }
            }
        ]
    },

    "applications": {
        "yii": {
            "type": "php",
            "user": "www-data",
            "targets": {
                "direct": {
                    "root": "/path/to/app/"
                },
                "index": {
                    "root": "/path/to/app/",
                    "script": "index.php"
                }
            }
        }
    }
}

You can also set up your PHP environment or supply a custom php.ini in the same configuration.