Apache2, Ubuntu and proxying

[localzuk]

I have a site hosted internally which needs to connect to another, externally hosted, site and as such it must go via our proxy server.

 

I've not had to do this before, so don't know where I would set the proxy address to allow this. It isn't possible within the site itself, so it needs to be done for apache itself. Any ideas?

[Geoff]

Apache makes no connections externally itself (other than DNS lookups). What sort of site is it? Is it PHP/Perl/etc?

[ajtaylor]

As Geoff says, Apache itself wouldn't be making connections for you.

 

What exactly are you trying to achieve, and in what language? If it's php, what function are you using to grab data from this other site, and what version of php?

[localzuk]

It's os-commerce. The currencies part of the system connects remotely to an exchange rate site to update the currency values of products. So it is a php site.

 

I didn't write the code, so I have no idea how it does it itself.

[ajtaylor]

I believe some functions of php5 understand http_proxy - you could try setting http_proxy in either the environment for apache, or in httpd.conf ?

[kesomir]

If it uses fopen, I don't think php uses http_proxy for that. I had a similar issue with a local rss cache I wrote for a flex application I'm building for our digital signage.

 

You may find this useful:

 

This feature has been added to PHP 5.0.0

Example Usage:

 $context = stream_context_create(
   array('http'=>
     array('proxy'=>'tcp://proxy.example.com:5100')
   ));

 $contents = file_get_contents('http://www.somesite.com/pat/to/file',
false, $context);

 

Source

 

EDIT: Instead of poking around in oscommerce - you could write a php proxy script using the above and redirect oscommerce to check the proxy url?

Edited June 7, 2008 by kesomir