Reverse Proxy question

Question

Hi,
I'm using the Sun Webserver 7 and my aim is to allow for some URLs to be reverse proxied into a different server altogether. e.g.
http://xyz.com/test/something.do --> http://abc.com/test/something.do and
http://xyz.com/test/images/123.jpg --> http://abc.com/test/images/123.jpg
Notice that the targetURL is essentially similar to the first one with the difference in domain.
1) The reason I have the /test/ in the target URL is because from what I have observed (and I have used the Webserver console only) if I had to map /test -> http://abc.com/ in the Reverse proxy then it looks like it adds the /test as well which I'd probably not like to have but its something I can live with.
2) Considering security, I don't want to reverse proxy all of http://abc.com/ but just the http://abc.com/test/ - the issue here though is the /test/. When I set the Reverse Proxy setting to map /test/ to http://abc.com/test/ I get an error during the re-deployment saying
set-origin-server reports: CORE7706: invalid URL: http://abc.com/test/ [there is a test directory in the docroot and I also created a simple index.jsp in it to be sure]
When I try with other existing URLs also http://abc.com/images/ I get the same error. So I'm going to assume only the server is expected here and nothing more. Is there a way around that? I see some people mention more specific URLs in their forum posts and wanted to know if there is something I'm missing.
Thanks for any input.

Answer 1

Hi,
I'm using the Sun Webserver 7 and my aim is to allow for some URLs to be reverse proxied into a different server altogether. e.g.
http://xyz.com/test/something.do --> http://abc.com/test/something.do and
http://xyz.com/test/images/123.jpg --> http://abc.com/test/images/123.jpg
Notice that the targetURL is essentially similar to the first one with the difference in domain.
1) The reason I have the /test/ in the target URL is because from what I have observed (and I have used the Webserver console only) if I had to map /test -> http://abc.com/ in the Reverse proxy then it looks like it adds the /test as well which I'd probably not like to have but its something I can live with.
You might want to check out pre defined variables and regular expression pattern matching within our product (which provides lot more options than what is possible through the console)
http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E19146-01/821-1827/gdaer/index.html
For example, I would do some thing like
a) manually edit the obj.conf or <vs>-obj.conf depending on your configuration
<Object name="default">
<If $urlhost =~ "/xyz.com" and $uri =~ "/test/(.*)" >
<If not $security>
NameTrans fn=rewrite from="http://abc.com/$1"
<Else>
NameTrans fn=rewrite from="https://abc.com/$1"
</Else>
</If>
<If>
... rest of the directives..
</If>
</Object>
2) Considering security, I don't want to reverse proxy all of http://abc.com/ but just the http://abc.com/test/ - the issue here though is the /test/. When I set the Reverse Proxy setting to map /test/ to http://abc.com/test/ I get an error during the re-deployment saying
set-origin-server reports: CORE7706: invalid URL: http://abc.com/test/ [there is a test directory in the docroot and I also created a simple index.jsp in it to be sure]
( I believe you shouldn't be using the trailing slash (it should have been http://abc.com/test
When I try with other existing URLs also http://abc.com/images/ I get the same error. So I'm going to assume only the server is expected here and nothing more. Is there a way around that? I see some people mention more specific URLs in their forum posts and wanted to know if there is something I'm missing.
In the reverse proxy scenario, can you try this ( you probably do not need my earlier ones too.. )
<Object name="default">
<If not $internal and $urlhost =~ "xyz.com">
NameTrans fn=map from="/test" to=http://abc.com/$1" rewrite-host=true # note: you could also add the name="..." option to this line and associate this map to say uri-/test object etc..
</If>
<If>
... rest of the directives..
</Object>
<Object name="uri-/test">
</Object>