Forum Discussion
Help with URL re-write example
I would like to have a rule that is able to parse incoming requests and re-write the URL when sending the request to the server on the back end. I would also like the ability to scan the response from the server and re-write any links back to the original requested URL.
For example:
Customer requests www.company.com/devcentral in their web browser. The BIG-IP re-writes the incoming request to www.devcentral.company.com before it sends it to the back-end server. Any reply coming from the server will have as links www.devcentral.company.com, and I would like those links re-written as www.company.com/devcentral.
Any help here would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks,
Rich
Anthony_Vaz_547Nimbostratus
Hey Rich
I'm not sure if this will answer your question - I may have the wrong end of the stick, so apologies if that's the case.
What you are describing sounds to me like you are wanting your BigIP to become a Reverse proxy - something which I guess by it hasn;t been designed to do.
My organisation wanted to do the same thing - the official response I got back from the SE at F5 was that there is an F5 Reverse Proxy to do this in another of their product suite. I'm sure this is fab, but like you I wanted to try and get this going with BigIP.
BigIP will pass the HTTP URI to the back end server, defined via irule or pool. If the back end server does not bind to a particular host name, or issue full redirects rather than relative redirects you should have no problem.
We have setup a pseudo reverse proxy here - having a single VS - that has a number of irules which depending on the URI will deliver the request to either a WebSphere server, Domino server, or Peoplesoft server. Each of those back end servers have different host names, but to the user, the host name in the URL is always the same. Again, none of our back end servers bind to a particular host name. This works absolutely brilliantly.
Hope this helps - sorry if I have got the wrong end of the stick
Good luck
Brian_Gupta_115Rich,
What is the driving the customer's requirement to do this rewrite? (I toyed with the idea writing an iRule to do this, but ended up pushing the application team to reconfigure their webservers to support the VIP).
-Brian- Brian_Gupta_115See: http://devcentral.f5.com/Default.aspx?tabid=28&view=topic&forumid=5&postid=1521
-Brian - Thanks for the quick replies. I will try the suggestions you have given me.
