Apache proxyPassReverse and Websockets

Question

I've been working on a Perl Mojolicious project that uses websockets. I'm wanting to launch it on a shared server running apache and use proxyPass and proxyPassReverse to make the url prettier for my Mojolicious code running with Hypnotoad.

I have it set up as follows.

Apache url:

mydomain.com

Hypnotoad url:

mydomain.com:8080

With the following apache entry I can reverse proxy the Hypnotoad server to

project.mydomain.com

apache.conf entry

<VirtualHost *:80>
  ServerName project.mydomain.com
  DocumentRoot /var/www/project
  <Directory /var/www/project/>
    Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
    AllowOverride None
    Order allow,deny
    allow from all
  </Directory>
  ProxyRequests Off
  ProxyPreserveHost On
  ProxyPass / http://mydomain.com:8080/ keepalive=On
  ProxyPassReverse / http://mydomain.com:8080/
  RequestHeader set X-Forwarded-HTTPS "0"
</VirtualHost>

However my websocket requests give a 404 error when I use:

ws://project.mydomain.com/get-data

and a 302 error when I use:

ws://mydomain.com:8080/get-data

I guess this wouldn't be a problem is the websocket didn't check for authentication, but they use Mojolicious routes to check that you can post via the websocket.

From what I can see Apache doesn't support reverse proxying websockets. In apache/httpd conf files.

Has anyone found a usable solution to this using Apache that is stable for a production environment?

Answer 1

In March a patch was committed to the Apache trunk by Jim Jagielski which allows websockets to be proxied correctly. The patch adds a new submodule called proxy_wstunnel which allows mod_proxy to work with the "ws" and "wss" protocols.

The module is not yet in any official Apache releases (as of June 8th 2013), so you will need to compile it yourself. Voyageur's blog describes the process for Apache 2.2, but it should be easier for Apache 2.4