NGINX configuration. PHP frameworks with PATHINFO 404

I'd prefer to use the following nginx config structure. It's cleaner:

location / {  try_files $uri $uri/ @phpsite;}location @phpsite {  include fastcgi_params;  ... other fast_cgi directives}

A bit more complex setup can be found in the popular silex project: http://silex.sensiolabs.org/doc/web_servers.html#nginx.

I see 2 problems in the original config file:

location ~ \.php$ {    try_files $uri =404;    ...}

1. In regex '$' means matching at the end of the string. So it failed as stated in the comments by prodigitalson.
2. That try_files directive inside the above fast_cgi location block should not be there because that location block is supposed to be handled by php alone. It's cleaner to remove that line.

I think what you're missing is a rule like

location / {    try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$args;}

that will try to call that index.php url if the path does not exist.

Or maybe, if you know that it is pointless to try other things, just

location / {    try_files /index.php?$args;}

or

location ~ /index.php {    try_files /index.php?$args;}

This works for me...

location ~ ^(.*?\.php)($|/.+) {    try_files $1 =404;    ... fastcgi conf...}