Handling Large Number of Dynamic Hosts in Custom Module Subrequests

[Maxim Dounin]

Hello!

On Mon, Sep 26, 2016 at 06:09:07PM +0000, Cloud Gate wrote:

[...]

> The first alternative approach we've come up with is to set an 
> HTTP header in the subrequest containing the target URL 
> (x_our_proxy_url=http://host1.domain.foo/...), target the 
> subrequest at a static /ourproxy location, and in nginx.conf 
> pass the URL from the header to proxy_pass:
> 
> location /ourproxy {
>    proxy_pass $http_x_our_proxy_url;
> }
> 
> While this works, it seems somewhat ad-hoc, and we're wondering 
> if there are better options for a subrequest to target arbitrary 
> hosts.
> module.

In general, using proxy_pass with a variable is correct.  Though 
instead of abusing HTTP headers (in general, this is not something 
nginx allows, and you are likely doing it wrong) I would recommend 
using part of URI instead, or just providing appropriate variable 
from your module.

-- 
Maxim Dounin
http://nginx.org/