apache - Retain original request URL on mod_proxy redirect

Question

I am running a WebApplication on a Servlet Container (port 8080) in an environment that can be accessed from the internet (external) and from company inside (intenal), e.g.

http://external.foo.bar/MyApplication
http://internal.foo.bar/MyApplication

The incomming (external/internal) requests are redirected to the servlet container using an apache http server with mod_proxy. The configuration looks like this:

ProxyPass /MyApplication http://localhost:8080/MyApplication retry=1 acquire=3000 timeout=600 Keepalive=On
ProxyPassReverse /MyApplication http://localhost:8080/MyApplication

I am now facing the problem that some MyApplication responses depend on the original request URL. Concrete: a WSDL document will be provided with a element that has a schemaLocation="<RequestUrl>?xsd=MyApplication.xsd" element.

With my current configuration it always looks like

<xs:import namespace="..." schemaLocation="http://localhost:8080/MyApplication?xsd=MyApplication.xsd"/>

but it should be

External Request: <xs:import namespace="..." schemaLocation="http://external.foo.bar/MyApplication?xsd=MyApplication.xsd"/>
Internal Request: <xs:import namespace="..." schemaLocation="http://internal.foo.bar/MyApplication?xsd=MyApplication.xsd"/>

I suppose this is a common requirement. But as I am no expert in configuration of the apache http server and its modules I would be glad if someone could give some (detailed) help.

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

If you're running Apache >= 2.0.31 then you might try to set the ProxyPreserveHost directive as described here.

This should pass the original Host header trough mod_proxy into your application, and normally the request URL will be rebuild there (in your Servlet container) using the Host header, so the schema location should be build using the host and path infos from "before" the proxy.

(Posted here too for the sake of completeness)