server {
    listen 80;
    server_name localhost;
    root /var/www/html;
    index index.php index.html index.htm;

    # Custom 404 error page setup
    error_page 404 /404.php;

    # 1. Block to handle static files directly
    # This location handles assets that should NOT be passed to index.php
    # (e.g., CSS, JS, images, fonts).
    # You can expand this regex (e.g., |woff|ttf|svg)
    location ~* \.(jpg|jpeg|gif|png|ico|css|js)$ {
        try_files $uri =404; # Serve the file if found, otherwise return a 404
    }

    # 2. Main location block (Front Controller Pattern)
    location / {
        # Check if the requested URI ($uri) exists as a file or directory.
        # If not, rewrite the request internally to index.php, 
        # preserving original query arguments ($args).
        try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$args;
    }

    # 3. Block to pass PHP scripts to PHP-FPM
    location ~ \.php$ {
        # This remains the same to execute any file ending in .php
        fastcgi_pass php:9000; # 'php' is the name of your PHP-FPM service
        fastcgi_index index.php;
        include fastcgi_params;
        fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
        fastcgi_param PATH_INFO $fastcgi_path_info;
    }
}