Apache-style multiviews with Nginx

You don't need any tedious rewrites, try_files works perfectly for this. It's essentially only one line.

server {
    server_name foo.com;
    root /your/root/path;
    index index.php;

    location /
        try_files $uri.php $uri/ /notfound.html;
    }

    # Your standard PHP location and everything else is still required here.
}