You may have developed a web application using JSF or other techniques, wich runs on an application server and should be reachable from the internet. You might configure your AppServer, e.g. GlassFish, listening on port 80 directly. Usually it is better to run this behind a HTTP server, which serves static content or provides load balancing. The folowing configuration is an example how to run GlassFish behind an Apach WebServer.

Its using this scenario:

  • The application runs on localhost:8080/myapp
  • The site is reachable on http://mydomain.net
  • The site is hosted on a virtual server
  • The complete site is forwared to the AppServer
  • The modules mod_proxy.so and mod_proxy_http.so are loaded
<VirtualHost *:80>
   ServerName mydomain.net
   ServerAlias www.mydomain.net

   ServerAdmin webmaster@mydomain.net
   DocumentRoot /var/htdocs/mydomain/

   <Directory /var/htdocs/mydomain/>
       Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
       AllowOverride None
       Order allow,deny
       allow from all
   </Directory>

  ProxyRequests Off

  <Proxy *>
    Order deny,allow
    Allow from all
  </Proxy>

  ProxyPass /myapp http://localhost:8080/myapp/
  ProxyPassReverse /myapp http://localhost:8080/myapp/

</VirtualHost>

Essential is the config of ProxyPass(Reverse), which forwards the directory (“/myapp”) to the adress of your AppServer (“http://localhost:8080/myapp/”). Please treat this only as an example. For security reasons you may run Apache within your dmz and GlassFish on a different machine behind your firewall.

Maybe I provide a full commented description later on in an future article of my JSF tutorial.

 

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