Version: 9.4.2.v20170220 |

Configuring Virtual Hosts
Previous | Chapter 5. Configuring Contexts Home | Next

##### Contact the core Jetty developers at www.webtide.com

private support for your internal/customer projects ... custom extensions and distributions ... versioned snapshots for indefinite support ... scalability guidance for your apps and Ajax/Comet projects ... development services for sponsored feature development

## Configuring Virtual Hosts

A virtual host is an alternative name, registered in DNS, for an IP address such that multiple domain names will resolve to the same IP of a shared server instance. If the content to be served to the aliases names is different, then a virtual host needs to be configured for each deployed context to indicate which names a context will respond to.

Virtual hosts are set on a context by calling the `setVirtualHosts` or `addVirtualHost` method which can be done in several ways:

- Using a context XML file in the webapps directory (see the example in test.xml in the Jetty distribution).
- Creating a custom deployer with a binding to configure virtual hosts for all contexts found in the same `webapps` directory.
- Calling the API directly on an embedded usage.
- Using a `WEB-INF/jetty-web.xml` file (now deprecated).

### Virtual Host Names

Jetty supports the following styles of virtual host name:

www.hostname.com
  A fully qualified host name. It is important to list all variants as a site may receive traffic from both www.hostname.com and just hostname.com
*.hostname.com
  A wildcard qualified host which will match only one level of arbitrary names. *.foo.com will match www.foo.com and m.foo.com, but not www.other.foo.com
10.0.0.2
  An IP address may be given as a virtual host name to indicate that a context should handle requests received on that server port that do not have a host name specified (HTTP/0.9 or HTTP/1.0).
@ConnectorName
  A connector name, which is not strictly a virtual host, but instead will only match requests that are received on connectors that have a matching name set with Connector.setName(String).
www.√integral.com
  Non-ASCII and IDN domain names can be set as virtual hosts using Puny Code equivalents that may be obtained from a Punycode/IDN converters. For example if the non-ASCII domain name `www.√integral.com` is given to a browser, then it will make a request that uses the domain name `www.xn--integral-7g7d.com`, which is the name that should be added as the virtual host name.

### Example Virtual Host Configuration

Virtual hosts can be used with any context that is a subclass of ContextHandler. Lets look at an example where we configure a web application - represented by the WebAppContext class - with virtual hosts. You supply a list of IP addresses and names at which the web application is reachable, such as the following:

- `333.444.555.666`
- `127.0.0.1`
- `www.blah.com`
- `www.blah.net`
- `www.blah.org`

Suppose you have a webapp called `blah.war`, that you want all of the above names and addresses to be served at path "`/blah`". Here’s how you would configure the virtual hosts with a context XML file:

    <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
    <!DOCTYPE Configure PUBLIC "-//Jetty//Configure//EN" "http://www.eclipse.org/jetty/configure_9_3.dtd">

    <Configure class="org.eclipse.jetty.webapp.WebAppContext">
      <Set name="contextPath">/blah</Set>
      <Set name="war"><Property name="jetty.webapps"/>blah.war</Set>
      <Set name="virtualHosts">
        <Array type="java.lang.String">
          <Item>333.444.555.666</Item>
          <Item>127.0.0.1</Item>
          <Item>www.blah.com</Item>
          <Item>www.blah.net</Item>
          <Item>www.blah.org</Item>
        </Array>
      </Set>
    </Configure>

### Using Different Sets of Virtual Hosts to Select Different Contexts

You can configure different contexts to respond on different virtual hosts by supplying a specific list of virtual hosts for each one.

For example, suppose your imaginary machine has these DNS names:

- `www.blah.com`
- `www.blah.net`
- `www.blah.org`
- `www.other.com`
- `www.other.net`
- `www.other.org`

Suppose also you have 2 webapps, one called `blah.war` that you would like served from the `*.blah.*` names, and one called `other.war` that you want served only from the `*.other.*` names.

Using the method of preparing contextXML files, one for each webapp yields the following:

For `blah` webapp:

    <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
    <!DOCTYPE Configure PUBLIC "-//Jetty//Configure//EN" "http://www.eclipse.org/jetty/configure_9_3.dtd">

    <Configure class="org.eclipse.jetty.webapp.WebAppContext">
      <Set name="contextPath">/blah</Set>
      <Set name="war"><Property name="jetty.webapps"/>/blah.war</Set>
      <Set name="virtualHosts">
        <Array type="java.lang.String">
          <Item>www.blah.com</Item>
          <Item>www.blah.net</Item>
          <Item>www.blah.org</Item>
        </Array>
      </Set>
    </Configure>

These URLs now resolve to the blah context (ie `blah.war`):

- `http://www.blah.com/blah`
- `http://www.blah.net/blah`
- `http://www.blah.org/blah`

For `other` webapp:

    <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
    <!DOCTYPE Configure PUBLIC "-//Jetty//Configure//EN" "http://www.eclipse.org/jetty/configure_9_3.dtd">

    <Configure class="org.eclipse.jetty.webapp.WebAppContext">
      <Set name="contextPath">/other</Set>
      <Set name="war"><Property name="jetty.webapps"/>/other.war</Set>
      <Set name="virtualHosts">
        <Array type="java.lang.String">
          <Item>www.other.com</Item>
          <Item>www.other.net</Item>
          <Item>www.other.org</Item>
        </Array>
      </Set>
    </Configure>

These URLs now resolve to the other context (i.e. `other.war`):

- `http://www.other.com/other`
- `http://www.other.net/other`
- `http://www.other.org/other`

### Using Different Sets of Virtual Hosts to Select Different Contexts at the Same Context Path

In the previous section we setup 2 different contexts to be served from different virtual hosts at different context paths. However, there is no requirement that the context paths must be distinct: you may use the same context path for multiple contexts, and use virtual hosts to determine which one is served for a given request.

Consider an example where we have the same set of DNS names as before, and the same webapps `blah.war` and `other.war`. We still want `blah.war` to be served in response to hostnames of `*.blah.*`, and we still want `other.war` to be served in response to `*.other.*` names. However, we would likeall of our clients to use the `"/"` context path, no matter which context is being targeted.

In other words, we want all of the following URLs to map to `blah.war`:

- `http://www.blah.com/`
- `http://www.blah.net/`
- `http://www.blah.org/`

Similarly, we want the following URLs to map to `other.war`:

- `http://www.other.com/`
- `http://www.other.net/`
- `http://www.other.org/`

To achieve this, we simply use the same context path of `/` for each of our webapps, while still applying our different set of virtual host names.

For foo webapp:

    <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
    <!DOCTYPE Configure PUBLIC "-//Jetty//Configure//EN" "http://www.eclipse.org/jetty/configure_9_3.dtd">

    <Configure class="org.eclipse.jetty.webapp.WebAppContext">
      <Set name="contextPath">/</Set>
      <Set name="war"><Property name="jetty.webapps"/>/foo.war</Set>
      <Set name="virtualHosts">
        <Array type="java.lang.String">
          <Item>www.blah.com</Item>
          <Item>www.blah.net</Item>
          <Item>www.blah.org</Item>
        </Array>
      </Set>
    </Configure>

For bar webapp:

    <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
    <!DOCTYPE Configure PUBLIC "-//Jetty//Configure//EN" "http://www.eclipse.org/jetty/configure_9_3.dtd">

    <Configure class="org.eclipse.jetty.webapp.WebAppContext">
      <Set name="contextPath">/</Set>
      <Set name="war"><Property name="jetty.webapps"/>/bar.war</Set>
      <Set name="virtualHosts">
        <Array type="java.lang.String">
          <Item>www.other.com</Item>
          <Item>www.other.net</Item>
          <Item>www.other.org</Item>
        </Array>
      </Set>
    </Configure>

Previous | Top | Next
Chapter 5. Configuring Contexts | Home | Temporary Directories

See an error or something missing? Contribute to this documentation at Github!(Generated: 2017-02-20)