Question

My setup:
thin running on port 1234 with --prefix /foobar
apache running on port 80
apache reverse proxies /foobar to thin on port 1234

I would like the static assets to not be served via the proxy to thin, but instead be served at /assets directly via apache instead.

I have to use a relative path because I don’t know the host name/ip of the rails application before startup (it’s app-in-a-box that should be able to be moved around).

I found config.action_controller.asset_host in production.rb, but I can’t set that to a relative path. When I do it gets confused and creates really bogus URLs.

How can I make this work?

Answer 1

First, I want to thank Geoff and darkliquid. I took what was in darkliquid’s link and worked on it to make it work for my case. The big challenge was that I wasn’t serving the rails application from the root of the webserver.

Notes:

• thin is run with --prefix '/railsapp' on port 9999.
• This works for windows and linux. W00T!
• I have to use the LA-U (look-ahead) to get the final filename apache would use.
• The IS_SUBREQ check is to prevent the look-ahead (a sub request) from ever returning the proxy.
• The /railsapp/index.html rewrite is required because otherwise another rule in my apache conf would rewrite it to /index.html, which is a default ‘here’s what’s here’ page; 404s are served elsewhere, though.

Here’s the relevant part of the apache configuration:

# Only proxy the thin stuff.
<Proxy /railsapp/*>
    Order deny,allow
    Allow from all
</Proxy>

## Add an alias for filename mapping.
Alias /railsapp "/website/root/railsapp/public"

## We need the Rewrite Engine for this.
RewriteEngine on
<IfDefine debug>
    ## If debugging, turn on logging.
    RewriteLogLevel 9
    RewriteLog "/website/logs/http.rewrite.log"
</IfDefine>

## Check for a static root page.
RewriteRule ^/railsapp/?$ /railsapp/index.html [QSA]

## Check for Rails caching.
RewriteRule ^(/railsapp/[^.]+)$ $1.html [QSA]

## Redirect all non-static requests to Rails.
# Don't proxy on sub-requests (needed to make the LA-U work).
RewriteCond %{IS_SUBREQ} false
# Use look-ahead to see if the filename exists after all the rewrites.
RewriteCond %{LA-U:REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
# Proxy it to Rails.
RewriteRule ^/railsapp(.*)$  http://127.0.0.1:9999%{REQUEST_URI} [P,QSA,L]

## Make sure Rails requests are reversed correctly.
ProxyPassReverse /railsapp http://127.0.0.1:9999/railsapp

## Disable keepalive; railsappd doesn't support them.
SetEnv proxy-nokeepalive 1