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mhofman / HAProxy-transparent-web-services-routing.md
Last active April 4, 2024 01:20
Leverage HAProxy to transparently route requests to web services identified by host name.

Web Service Fronting

Multiple Web properties on a single IP address

Hosting multiple websites on a single public IP address on the standard HTTP(S) ports is relatively easy with popular web servers like Apache, Nginx and lighttpd all supporting Virtual Hosts.
For Web Services which bundle their own HTTP server, things get more complicated, unless their HTTP stack can be shared somehow. More often than not, the application's HTTP stack listens directly on a dedicated TCP port.

Hosting multiple services on a single IP then requires using a fronting server listening on the standard HTTP port, and routing to the right backend service based on the host name or the path sent by the client.
Path based routing is cumbersome, usually requiring either the service to be aware of the path prefix, or a rewrite by the HTTP fronting server of all absolute URLs in the requests and responses.
Hostname based routing is more straightforward. The fronting server can just look at the [HTTP/1.1 Host header](https://tools

Note

Apple will reject apps that are using private url schemes (Ugh, Apple....) if they are pretty much obvius. Some apps are rejected and others are not, so, be aware of this issue before implementing any of those URL's in your app as a feature.

Updates

  • [UPDATE 4] iOS 10 update: apparently settings now can be reached using App-Pref instead of prefs
  • [UPDATE 3] For now you just can use url schemes to open your apps's settings with Swift 3.0 (Xcode 8). I'll keep you informed when OS preferences can be reached
  • [UPDATE 2] The openURL() method of UIApplication is now deprecated. You should use application(_:open:options:) instead
  • [UPDATE 1] Not yet tested in iOS 10. It will fail because of policies changes in URL scheme handling.