Nginx + React: How to Serve a Single Page Application Correctly (And Why Most Tutorials Get It Wrong)

Nginx + React: How to Serve a Single Page Application Correctly (And Why Most Tutorials Get It Wrong) By Vivian Chiamaka Okose Tags: #nginx #react #terraform #azure #devops #spa #nodejs #cloud #beginners There is one Nginx configuration line that every React developer deploying to a Linux server needs to know. Most tutorials skip past it without explanation. I learned it the hard way -- by understanding exactly what breaks without it. This is the story of Assignment 3 of my Terraform series: provisioning an Azure VM with Terraform, deploying a React application on it, and configuring Nginx to serve it correctly. Along the way I hit a Node.js version incompatibility and learned why try_files $uri /index.html is not optional for SPAs. What I Built Using Terraform, I provisioned the following on Microsoft Azure: A Resource Group, Virtual Network, and Subnet A Network Security Group with explicit SSH and HTTP rules An NSG Association linking the security group to the subnet A Static Public