Thanks for posting!

Jim

Thanks for posting this, it is very helpful. I am trying to configure a system similar to yours with a slight variation.

I will need to parse the URL to determine which VirtualHost to forward the request to. The url will look something like [webservice.blaa.com...]

I will need to forward based on the last 4 digits in the URL, however, I will not know which jboss instance to forward to until I do a database lookup to see which server this resource is located on. I am serving up web-services that run against several oracle back-ends which are segmented into virtual private databases, the resources can and do get moved.

I have not found any documentation on the Apache site that suggest what might be the best way to go about this. I have looked at dynamically writing out an .htaccess file, but have read where this might have performance implications.

I have also looked at the Apache Camel project, but I do not think that this warrants a message bus.

Has anybody configured a system similar to this? Any suggestions and/or advice would be greatly appreciated.

Take a look at mod_rewrite's RewriteMap. You can use that to call a script during the URL-to-filename translation phase of the Apache API, and then either rewrite to the result of that lookup (if the path is on this server), or do a reverse-proxy through-put to the correct server using the [P] and [PT] flags.

Generally, the script called by using a RewriteMap will be written in PERL, but it could be anything that can support reading your database. Be very careful, though; This script must never be allowed to 'die' because only one instance of this script is ever started or executed. If it dies, your server(s) won't work.

RewriteMaps must be defined at the server config level, but can then be accessed by mod_rewrite code in both server config files and in .htaccess files.

Jim

Thanks Jim for the speedy reply. I will give that a shot and post how it goes.

TK

Thanks for posting this thez, it is very helpful to me as I am setting up a similar machine.

My big question now is if set up apache to run SSL, when the connection is redirected to "firstdomain" or "anotherdomain" will the ssl conection carry over or will the connections to firstdomain and anotherdomain be unsecured?

TYIA

Vegeta - on your question, I believe the Apache docs say you can't use name based virtual hosting with SSL. I think because the domain is encrypted.

I've also been bashing on this for a while. Thank you for your post, but I still can't get this work.

My two domains are bushe.com and eventbus.org. When I got to [bushe.com,...] my browser gets a 302 and gets redirected to
[bushe.com...]

That results in a 404 with the description: The requested resource (/bushebushe/) is not available.

Are you getting the 302 redirect? Since it's a proxy (and to localhost), that's not what I'm expecting. And you said the browser is not supposed to know.

My apache configuration is almost exactly like yours, maybe there's something wrong in Jboss?

The bushe.war dir has a <context-root>bushe</context-root> in jboss-web.xml, similar for eventbus.war.

Here's my httpd.conf:

NameVirtualHost *:80

<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName www.bushe.com
ServerAlias bushe.com
ProxyPass / [localhost:8080...]
ProxyPassReverse / [localhost:8080...]
ProxyPreserveHost On
ProxyPassReverseCookiePath / /
ErrorLog logs/bushe.com-error_log
TransferLog logs/bushe.com-access_log

# DocumentRoot /var/www/bushe.com
# Options Indexes +FollowSymLinks
</VirtualHost>

<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName www.eventbus.org
ServerAlias eventbus.org
ProxyPass / [localhost:8080...]
ProxyPassReverse / [localhost:8080...]
ProxyPreserveHost On
ProxyPassReverseCookiePath / /
ErrorLog logs/eventbus.org-error_log
TransferLog logs/eventbus.org-access_log

# DocumentRoot /var/www/bushe.com
# Options Indexes +FollowSymLinks
</VirtualHost>

The bushe.com domain works if I use [localhost:8080...] instead of [localhost:8080...]

TIA

It seems jboss is sending the 302, I'm not sure why. Since this is not apache, I'll take it outside this forum:
wget [localhost:8080...]
--07:55:09-- [localhost:8080...]
Resolving localhost... 127.0.0.1
Connecting to localhost¦127.0.0.1¦:8080... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 302 Moved Temporarily
Location: [localhost:8080...] [following]
--07:55:09-- [localhost:8080...]
Connecting to localhost¦127.0.0.1¦:8080... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 2733 (2.7K) [text/html]
Saving to: `index.html'

DOH! I figured it out. I did not have this trailing "/" on the ProxyPass:
WRONG:ProxyPass / [localhost:8080...]
RIGHT:ProxyPass / [localhost:8080...]

Having been bitten by the trailing slash so many times with mod_rewrite, I should have caught that earlier.

THANKS FOR THE POST!

Hi Jim,

I have having a tough time. I have read and reread the apache doc for mod rewrite and cannot seem to get my rewrite to work for post requests, the get requests work fine. Would you mind looking at my rules to see if anything jumps out at you?

ServerName vmQADev05
Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine on

RewriteMap club prg:/var/www/php/clubs.php

RewriteLock /etc/httpd/logs/rewrite.lock
RewriteLog /etc/httpd/logs/rewrite_log

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/ws/(.*)/([0-9]{4})$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^/ws/(.*)/([0-9]{4})$ [10.xx.xx.xx:${club:$2}...] [R,L]

I can ProxyPass and both the POST and GET work. My problem is I do not which JBOSS to forward to until I do a db lookup for matcher group $2. Does anybody have any suggestions or point me to a code sample?

The RewriteCond is utterly redundant. Since the RewriteRule is looking at exactly the same thing, get rid of that RewriteCond.

See the [P] flag for RewriteRule, since you don't want a redirect here, but rather a reverse-proxy through-put.

Jim

Thank you for the help!

I ended up with this and it works like a charm:

RewriteRule ^/ws/(.*)/([0-9]{4})$ [10.xx.xx.xx${club:$2}...] [P]

I had to remove the colon from the path and return it from my script, so instead of returning 8080, the script returns :8080 ¦ what ever port my JBoss is listening on. Otherwise I was getting a DNS lookup error, because the return value from the script was not getting substituted in the path.

Go figure, I think I have fried many brain cells :).

tk

That's kinda weird. I suspect the colon may have cause incorrect parsing of the "${club" map invocation.

Did you try escaping it? Escaping is rarely required in substitution strings, but you may have just found one of those rare requirements... :)

Just wondering if you tried:

RewriteRule ^/ws/(.*)/([0-9]{4})$ http://10.0.0.1[b]0\:${c[/b]lub:$2}/abc-web-services-1.3.0/$1/$2 [P]

Jim

I did try to escape the colon, but that did not work either. I think that is what made it difficult to figure out what was going on.

Thanks for all your help :)

tk