Exclude API Route From Nginx HTTP Basic Authentication - linux

Question

I'm trying to exclude the API route "https://example.com/api/" from the Nginx HTTP Basic Authentication.
Here is my Nginx Conf:
server {
listen 80;
listen [::]:80;
server_name example.com;
return 302 https://$server_name$request_uri;
}
server {
# SSL configuration
listen 443 ssl http2;
listen [::]:443 ssl http2;
ssl_certificate /etc/nginx/ssl/cert.crt;
ssl_certificate_key /etc/nginx/ssl/key.pem;
ssl_client_certificate /etc/nginx/ssl/cloudflare.crt;
ssl_verify_client on;
server_name example.com;
root /var/www/mysite;
index app.php index.php;
location / {
try_files $uri $uri/ /app.php$is_args$args;
# Restricting Access
auth_basic 'Administrator Area';
auth_basic_user_file /etc/apache2/.htpasswd;
}
location ~ \.php$ {
include snippets/fastcgi-php.conf;
fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php/php7.2-fpm.sock;
}
# Restriction off for api
location ^~ /api/ {
auth_basic off;
allow all;
}
}
But when I try to hit "https://example.com/api/" on the browser, it's still asking for basic authentication. Usually, without basic authentication, it should provide a JSON response on the browser.
Does anyone know how to solve this issue? Any kind of help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.