Simple Apache Proxying

By  on  

I was recently working with Apache and a service running on Kris Zyp's Persevere project (which is beyond awesome).  Persevere was pushing messages to my application which was running on Apache; the problem was that Persevere and Apache were running on different ports which technically made them cross-domain.  In order to make the server believe the web service was on the same domain/port, I needed to use Apache proxying.  I opened the conf/httpd.conf file and added the following magic to make that possible:

# Proxy requests to /data to persevere
ProxyPass /service http://localhost:8080/Status
ProxyPassReverse /service/ http://localhost:8080/Status
RewriteRule ^/service$ http://localhost:8080/Status$1 [P,L]

Now any reference to the directory "/Status" is proxied to the other port to receive the data!  Apache proxying is a huge boost to your web application if you can trust the other domain/port.

Recent Features

  • By
    fetch API

    One of the worst kept secrets about AJAX on the web is that the underlying API for it, XMLHttpRequest, wasn't really made for what we've been using it for.  We've done well to create elegant APIs around XHR but we know we can do better.  Our effort to...

  • By
    Welcome to My New Office

    My first professional web development was at a small print shop where I sat in a windowless cubical all day. I suffered that boxed in environment for almost five years before I was able to find a remote job where I worked from home. The first...

Incredible Demos

  • By
    MooTools, Mario, and Portal

    I'm a big fan of video games. I don't get much time to play them but I'll put down the MacBook Pro long enough to get a few games in. One of my favorites is Portal. For those who don't know, what's...

  • By
    spellcheck Attribute

    Many useful attributes have been provided to web developers recently:  download, placeholder, autofocus, and more.  One helpful older attribute is the spellcheck attribute which allows developers to  control an elements ability to be spell checked or subject to grammar checks.  Simple enough, right?

Discussion

  1. Not getting…. :-(

  2. I don’t remember for sure, but off the top of my head don’t you have to enable the proxy module as well?

  3. That’s one of the best uses for apache proxying I’ve seen! Awesome!

Wrap your code in <pre class="{language}"></pre> tags, link to a GitHub gist, JSFiddle fiddle, or CodePen pen to embed!