[Fwd: Re: Invitation to HTTPD commiters in tomcat-dev]

[Henri Gomez <hg...@apache.org>]

Manni Wood wrote:

> One of the things I thought AJP did that HTTP proxying to Tomcat could
> not (but correct me here if I'm wrong) is let the servelt container know
> whether or not the connection is HTTP vs. HTTPS. This sort of
> information needs to get passed back to the servlet container to satisfy
> the servlet specification.

This can be easily implemented by a combination of 
mod_proxy/mod_dir/mod_ssl and a well defined set of request headers - 
this doesn't justify a whole separate protocol though.

It looks like the stuff that ajp can do over and above HTTP can be 
implemented using HTTP without much trouble.

> Also, servlets (by the specification) need to be able to manipulate HTP
> request headers, particularly where cookies are concerned. I was under
> the impression that AJP allowed this, whereas mod_proxy did not, but
> perhaps I am wrong?

mod_proxy just passes headers (excluding hop by hop headers) between 
httpd and the backend tomcat, I don't know of any reason why such 
headers can't be manipulated by a servlet container.

Regards,
Graham
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