How to implement an (application) proxy in Java on Tomcat?

Question

In order to make an application compatible with our SSO implementation I need to handle an HTTP request (which adds some HTTP headers) and then "forward" that request to another web server (3rd party web server).

[Browser]-->[MyProxyApp on Tomcat]-->[Another Webserver]

Is Tomcat able to "forward" (reverse-proxy) requests to another server?

Simplest way I can think of is a servlet that implements an HTTPClient, but I was hoping for a simpler solution.

"Noodle" seems to do the job, but given it's age, I'm not sure it's 100% compatible with the current web standards (websockets, longpolling and such things)

Not by using Tomcat or Servlets. You need to write Sockets code. Using a Servlet would add far too much latency, even if you could get it to work, which is problematic. Or use Apache HTTPD, which makes it trivial. — user207421
– user207421, Commented Feb 5, 2017 at 21:40
Yea, I'd use apache, but I have some Java code that needs to run, I don't want to put that into an apache module. Latency is not an issue - I mean it is not expected to perform well. — PhilW
– PhilW, Commented Feb 6, 2017 at 9:40

Jan B. · Accepted Answer · 2017-02-05 21:33:24Z

1

There is an active github project which has been around for a while:

https://github.com/mitre/HTTP-Proxy-Servlet

It is implemented as a Java Servlet based on HttpClient, probably exactly what you thought of, but maintained and available in the Maven repos

https://mvnrepository.com/artifact/org.mitre.dsmiley.httpproxy/smiley-http-proxy-servlet

answered Feb 5, 2017 at 21:33

Jan B.

6,5585 gold badges38 silver badges57 bronze badges

Sign up to request clarification or add additional context in comments.

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

How to implement an (application) proxy in Java on Tomcat?

1 Answer 1

Comments

Your Answer

Hot Network Questions

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

1 Answer 1

Comments

Your Answer

Sign up or log in

Post as a guest

Related