Lighttpd

Hi,

i am developing a Javascript SPA with a PHP API backend, that must both be served from the same domain. On production the SPA is built to static html/javascript files and i have essentially the following configuration, that works:

$HTTP["host"] == "example.com" {
    server.name = "example.com" 
    server.document-root = ROOT_DIR + "/frontend/build/" 

    fastcgi.server = ( "/index.php" =>
        ((
            "socket" => "/run/php/php8.1-fpm.sock",
            "broken-scriptfilename" => "enable",
            "allow-x-send-file" => "enable",
            "docroot" => ROOT_DIR + "/backend/host/",
            "check-local" => "disable" 
        ))
    )

    url.rewrite-once = (
        "^/(api/.*)$" => "/index.php/$1",
    )
}

However, during development i do not want to serve the static SPA, but use a reverse proxy to serve the SPA using nodejs. So on the development machine i tried to use the following configuration, which does not work, because apparently the rule $HTTP["url"] !~ "^/api/" does not match:

$HTTP["host"] == "example.com" {
    fastcgi.server = ( "/index.php" =>
        ((
            "socket" => "/run/php/php8.1-fpm.sock",
            "broken-scriptfilename" => "enable",
            "allow-x-send-file" => "enable",
            "docroot" => ROOT_DIR + "/backend/host/",
            "check-local" => "disable" 
        ))
    )

    $HTTP["url"] !~ "^/api/" {
        proxy = (
           "" => (( "host" => "127.0.0.1", "port" => 3000 ))
        )
    }

    url.rewrite-once = (
        "^/(api/.*)$" => "/index.php/$1",
    )
}

Trying to access SPA results in a "403 Forbidden", debug-log reveals, that LightTPD is searching for the files in the default location "/var/www/html" instead of using the proxy. Serving the PHP backend still works. What am i doing wrong? Thanks!