Vanity URLs without trailing slashes on Nginx

Question

With some help from @jon-lin, we figured out how to remove trailing slashes on Apache (Vanity URLs without trailing slashes on Apache); now, as we plan to run our site on Nginx, we'd like to do the same. We tried several suggestions we found on stackoverflow and elsewhere, but all result in an infinite loop (probably because browsers try to put the slashes back in). Our current configuration (with three of our attempts -- rewrite ^/(.*)/$ https://www.example.com/$1 permanent; rewrite ^/(.*)/$ https://www.example.com/$1; and rewrite ^/(.*)/$ /$1 permanent; -- commented out) is:

server {
        listen 80;
        server_name  example.com;
        return 301 https://www.example.com$request_uri;
}
server {
        listen 80;
        server_name  www.example.com;
        return 301 https://www.example.com$request_uri;
}
server {
        listen 443;
        server_name  example.com;
        return 301 https://www.example.com$request_uri;
}

server {
        listen 443 ssl default_server;
        listen [::]:443 ssl default_server;
        server_name www.example.com;

        #rewrite ^/(.*)/$ https://www.example.com/$1 permanent;
        #rewrite ^/(.*)/$ https://www.example.com/$1;
        #rewrite ^/(.*)/$ /$1 permanent;

        root /var/www/example.com/html;
        index index.php index.html index.htm;

        location / {
                # First attempt to serve request as file, then
                # as directory, then fall back to displaying a 404.
                try_files $uri $uri/ =404;
        }

        location ~ \.php$ {
                include snippets/fastcgi-php.conf;
                fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php5-fpm.sock;
        }

        ssl on;
        ssl_certificate /etc/letsencrypt/live/example.com/fullchain.pem;
        ssl_certificate_key /etc/letsencrypt/live/example.com/privkey.pem;
        ssl_prefer_server_ciphers on;
        ssl_session_cache shared:SSL:10m;
        ssl_protocols TLSv1 TLSv1.1 TLSv1.2;
        ssl_ciphers ECDHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384:DHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:DHE-DSS-AES128-GCM-SHA256:kEDH+AESGCM:ECD$
        add_header Strict-Transport-Security "max-age=63072000; includeSubdomains; preload";
        ssl_dhparam /etc/ssl/certs/dhparam.pem;

}

How can this be done?

In our particular case, we needed all URLs to be stripped of their trailing slashes; we accomplished that by adding the following to Apache's httpd.conf:

DirectorySlash Off

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -d
RewriteRule ^(.*[^/])$ /$1/

Then, rewriting all entries in /profiles/ was accomplished with this:

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /profiles/$1 [NC,L]

Answer 1

If your no longer use the /profiles/ directory, this should work:

server {
  ...
  root /var/www/example.com/html;
  index index.php index.html index.htm;

  location / {
    try_files $uri @rewrite;
  }
  location @rewrite {   
    rewrite ^(.*[^/])$ $1/; 
  }
  location ~ \.php$ { ... }
}

In the above configuration we avoid the $uri/ element on the try_files as it triggers a redirect that adds a trailing / to the current URL.

If you want a configuration similar to your previous Apache configuration, then this should work:

server {
  ...
  root /var/www/example.com/html;
  index index.php index.html index.htm;

  location / {
    try_files $uri $uri/ @rewrite;
  }
  location @rewrite {   
    rewrite ^(.*[^/])$ /profiles$1/; 
  }
  location ~ \.php$ { ... }
}

As you can see, the $uri/ element does no harm in this situation.

Following your comments and recent edit, this third (less elegant) configuration combines features from the other two, and is a close (but not exact) implementation of your Apache configuration:

server {
  ...
  root /var/www/example.com/html;
  index index.php index.html index.htm;

  location = / { rewrite ^ /index.php; }
  location / {
    try_files $uri @rewrite;
  }
  location @rewrite {
    if (-d $document_root/profile$uri) { rewrite ^ /profiles$uri/ last; }
    if (-d $request_filename) { rewrite ^(.*[^/])$ $uri/ last; }
  }
  location ~ \.php$ { ... }
}

And finally, this version deviates slightly from the brief. The php execution block is replaced by a named location. But is does allow the use of cascaded try_files directives, removing the nasty if directives, and discarding index in the process. Enjoy:

server {
  ...
  root /var/www/example.com/html;

  location / {
    try_files $uri $uri.html $uri/index.html /profiles$uri/index.html @php;
  }
  location @php {
    try_files $uri.php $uri/index.php /profiles$uri/index.php =404;
    include snippets/fastcgi-php.conf;
    fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php5-fpm.sock;
  }
  location ~ \.php$ { rewrite ^(.*)\.php$ $1 permanent; }
}

It's a hybrid of slash-less and extension-less php, with your profiles tweak.

Answer 2

Combining @richard-smith's first option in his answer here with the "evil" if, we made it work:

    location / {
        if (!-e $request_filename) {
        rewrite ^(.*)$ /profiles$1/ break;
        }
        try_files $uri @rewrite;
    }

    location @rewrite {
        rewrite ^(.*[^/])$ $1/;
    }

Now all trailing slashes are gone and profiles in example.com/profiles/profile/ are rewritten to example.com/profile