reactjs - How to setup apache server for React route?

Question

I have my react app running great on my local dev server but it did not work when I dump my production ready files straight into Apache's htdocs directory:

Here is what I have:

/var/www/index.html
/var/www/bundle.js

and I have

DocumentRoot /var/www

in /etc/apache2/sites-available/000-default.conf

The fact is that
1). when I access http://...com/ that routed me to Login page
2). After I clicked a link

<Link to="main"><button>Log In</button></Link>

the content in the browser location field become:

http://...com/main

3). Now if I reload this url (http://...com/main), I got

The requested URL /main was not found on this server

My rounting in React:

    <Router history={browserHistory }>
      <Route path="/" component={TopContainer}>
          <IndexRoute component={Login} />
          <Route path='main' component={MainContainer} />   
      </Route>
</Router>

What else I am missing in the apache configuration?

thanks

Answer 1

Change the VirtualHost configuration (typically found in /etc/httpd/conf.dvhosts.conf) by adding the following Rewrite* lines:

<VirtualHost *:8080>
  ServerName example.com
  DocumentRoot /var/www/httpd/example.com

  <Directory "/var/www/httpd/example.com">
    ...

    RewriteEngine on
    # Don't rewrite files or directories
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -f [OR]
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -d
    RewriteRule ^ - [L]
    # Rewrite everything else to index.html to allow html5 state links
    RewriteRule ^ index.html [L]
  </Directory>
</VirtualHost>

This tells Apache to serve any files that exist, but if they don't exist, just serve /index.html rather than a 404: not found.

• Apache Reference: Configuring Apache Virtual Hosts

• react-router History Reference: Configuring Your Server

Complete answer gratefully stolen from here