AWS Beanstalk config file not executing at deployment

After multiple fails to correctly deploy my Laravel app through Beanstalk I decided to follow the basic AWS tutorial on how to create a Laravel app and deploy it to Beanstack (in order to rule it out as a cause.)

It launched and so I then added the following endpoint in routes/web.php:

Route::get('/hello', function () {
    return 'hi';
});

It failed.

I then discovered that Beanstalk switched its server from Apache to nginx just a couple of months ago! No mention of this in the Laravel tutorial despite it meaning that the two are no longer compatible in their default states.

After doing a bit of digging, I found a link to another AWS tutorial which apparently resolves the issues: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/elasticbeanstalk/latest/dg/platforms-linux-extend.html

The solution looked very simple: create a custom configuration file and store it in a .ebextensions directory called ‘.platform’ (dot platform) which would be located in the app directory.

I created a custom file called laravel.config with the inside:

location / {
    try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$query_string;
    gzip_static on;
}

The path to the file is:

~/my-app/.platform/nginx/conf.d/elasticbeanstalk/

I re-deployed. The api still doesn’t work…

I connected to the instance through SHH and noticed that the .platform directory isn’t there. I guess this makes sense since it’s only used at the point of deployment…