"middleman" server

Hello,

I have no clue what this is called, but I'm trying to find out how
this would be done.

I want to set it up so that I have a server that all requests AND
responses from my web server go through. For instance, a user would
go to www.mysomedomain.com/request/mypage.php. That request would go
through a server (let's call it SERVER X). SERVER X might or might
not do some stuff with the request (i.e. logging certain stats about
the request). Then SERVER X would forward the request onto the web
server (SERVER Y) where the actuall application resides and would
build the response. SERVER Y would send the response back, but
instead of going directly to the client, it would go through SERVER
X. SERVER X would perform some processing on the response as well as
some logging for statistical purposes. SERVER X would then forward on
that response that it generates (a modified response from SERVER Y)
onto the client browser.

HTTP REQUEST
user (browser) -> SERVER Y -> SERVER X

HTTP RESPONSE
SERVER X -> SERVER Y -> user (browser)

How would I go about doing this? Primarily SERVER Y would be for any
customer of ours, so it isn't a preset server. This would be a
service that we'd hope would be one solved by DNS/BIND configuration
as well as maybe some Apache foo. Hopefully in the end the customer
would have to only make a couple of changes technically on their end
to redirect traffic through SERVER Y.

Is this sort of like a transparent proxy server?

Thanks!

I'm so sorry. I'm a dork. Here is a correction.

......

HTTP REQUEST
user (browser) -> SERVER X -> SERVER Y

HTTP RESPONSE
SERVER Y -> SERVER X -> user (browser)

How would I go about doing this? Primarily SERVER Y would be any
customer of ours, so it isn't a preset server. This would be a
service that we'd hope would be one solved by DNS/BIND configuration
as well as maybe some Apache foo. Hopefully in the end the customer
would have to only make a couple of changes technically on their end
to redirect traffic through SERVER X.

Thanks!

On Mon, 18 Feb 2008 14:07:30 -0800, PhxVyper wrote:

> I have no clue what this is called, but I'm trying to find out how
> this would be done.

Look at the Apache documentation for mod_proxy, reverse proxy.

Dan

On Feb 18, 5:16 pm, Dan N <d...@localhost.net> wrote:
> On Mon, 18 Feb 2008 14:07:30 -0800, PhxVyper wrote:
> > I have no clue what this is called, but I'm trying to find out how
> > this would be done.
>
> Look at the Apache documentation for mod_proxy, reverse proxy.
>
> Dan

Thanks, Dan. Reverse Proxy looks very much like the ticket.

How could I process the response before sending it to the user? For
instance, there may be times when I want to change or add content to
an html page that is part of the response and maybe even do other
stuff to the response. It would be great if I could write
applications (i.e. via PHP) to manipulate the response before allowing
it to continue through to the user.

Thanks,
Chad

On Mon, 18 Feb 2008 19:18:43 -0800, PhxVyper wrote:

> On Feb 18, 5:16 pm, Dan N <d...@localhost.net> wrote:
>> On Mon, 18 Feb 2008 14:07:30 -0800, PhxVyper wrote:
>> > I have no clue what this is called, but I'm trying to find out how
>> > this would be done.
>>
>> Look at the Apache documentation for mod_proxy, reverse proxy.
>>
>> Dan
>
> Thanks, Dan. Reverse Proxy looks very much like the ticket.
>
> How could I process the response before sending it to the user? For
> instance, there may be times when I want to change or add content to an
> html page that is part of the response and maybe even do other stuff to
> the response. It would be great if I could write applications (i.e. via
> PHP) to manipulate the response before allowing it to continue through
> to the user.
>
> Thanks,
> Chad

Look at the mod_rewrite apache module. Not sure what you want to do, but
it seems overly and or unnecessarily complex.