Topic: ugly url name via reverse proxy

[chongster]

Hi, I'm having trouble making the URL look nice.
I have Apache redirecting all request to Tomcat, which is reading jsp, via reverse proxy, but the url is not pretty at all.
This my current setup

<VirtualHost *:80>

ServerName app.example.com
ServerAlias www.dummy-host.example.com

ProxyPass / ajp://localhost:8109/app
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule /app/(.*)$ /$1 [PT]

ErrorLog "logs/dummy-host.example.com-error.log"
CustomLog "logs/dummy-host.example.com-access.log" common
</VirtualHost>

result after typing in app.example.com:
app.example.com/app
Goal:
app.example.com

I've also tried
RewriteRule /app/(.*)$ /$1 [R]
This got me the result I want, but I was not able to login.

Thanks a bunch!

[Steffen]

Have a look ProxyPassReverse at http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/mod/mod_proxy_ajp.html

There is written:

Note that usually no ProxyPassReverse directive is necessary. The AJP request includes the original host header given to the proxy, and the application server can be expected to generate self-referential headers relative to this host, so no rewriting is necessary.

The main exception is when the URL path on the proxy differs from that on the backend. In this case, a redirect header can be rewritten relative to the original host URL (not the backend ajp:// URL), for example:

Rewriting Proxied Path

ProxyPass /apps/foo ajp://backend.example.com:8009/foo
ProxyPassReverse /apps/foo http://www.example.com/foo

However, it is usually better to deploy the application on the backend server at the same path as the proxy rather than to take this approach.

[chongster]

Thanks,

Unfortunately when I tried ProxyPass by itself I get a redirect loop error.

When I go to app.example.com, it will automatically add /app at the end...

[Steffen]

Have a look at last comment at http://stackoverflow.com/questions/19906121/apache-2-x-and-mod-proxy-produce-redirect-loop-if-user-is-not-authenticated

[chongster]

Thanks Steffen, I tried the last comment, but it is still giving me a redirect loop error.

[James Blond]

[chongster]

I don't have anything in the DocumentRoot though...
I'm curious on why do you have DocumentRoot and ProxyPass together? Correct me if I'm wrong, from my understanding, the DocumentRoot basically tell apache to look there and read the stuff in there. ProxyPass is like Apache directing the request to other servlet.

P.S. My current situation is very similar to this