Configuration

Apache

sudo a2enmod rewrite
sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

<VirtualHost *:80>
    DocumentRoot /path_to_webapp/docroot/
    ServerName vhost.domain.com
    CustomLog /var/log/apache2/access.log combined
    ErrorLog /var/log/apache2/error.log
</VirtualHost>

nginx

For the nginx web server you need to use FastCGI PHP and basically route all requests to dispath.php in the docroot directory of the application.

server {
    listen   80;
    server_name  some.hostname.com;
    root   /path_to_webapp/app/docroot;

    access_log  /var/log/nginx/access.log;
    error_log  /var/log/nginx/error.log;

    location / {
        gzip_static on;
        # serve static files directly
        if (-f $request_filename) {
            expires 5d;
            break;
        }
        if (-f $request_filename/index.html) {
            rewrite (.*) $1/index.html break;
        }
        if (-f $request_filename.html) {
            rewrite (.*) $1.html break;
        }
        rewrite ^(.*)$ /dispatch.php?path=$1 last;
        index  index.php index.html index.htm;
    }
    # pass the PHP scripts to FastCGI server listening on 127.0.0.1:9000
    #
    location ~ \.php$ {
        fastcgi_pass   127.0.0.1:9000;
        fastcgi_index  index.php;
        fastcgi_param  SCRIPT_FILENAME  /path_to_webapp/app/docroot/dispatch.php;
        fastcgi_param   PATH_INFO $uri;
        include     fastcgi_params;
    }


    # deny access to .htaccess files, if Apache's document root
    # concurs with nginx's one
    #
    location ~ /\.ht {
        deny  all;
    }
}