Proxies

You can set Crow up behind any HTTP proxy of your liking, but we will be focusing specifically on 2 of the most popular web server software solutions, Apache2 and Nginx.

A reverse proxy allows you to use Crow without exposing it directly to the internet. It also allows you to, for example, have crow run on a certain specific domain name, subdomain, or even a path, such as domain.abc/crow.

We advise that you set crow up behind some form of reverse proxy if you plan on running a production Crow server that isn't local.

SSL

When using a proxy, make sure that you do not compile Crow with SSL enabled. SSL should be handled by the proxy.

Apache2

Assuming you have both Apache2 and the modules proxy, proxy_http, proxy_html (if you plan on serving HTML pages), and proxy_wstunnel (if you plan on using websockets). You will need to enable those modules, which you can do using the following commands:

a2enmod proxy
a2enmod proxy_http
a2enmod proxy_html
a2enmod proxy_wstunnel

Next up you'll need to change your configuration (default is /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default.conf) and add the following lines (replace localhost and 40080 with the address and port you defined for your Crow App):

ProxyPass / http://localhost:40080
ProxyPassReverse / http://localhost:40080

If you want crow to run in a subdirectory (such as domain.abc/crow) you can use the location tag:

<Location "/crow">
    ProxyPass http://localhost:40080
    ProxyPassReverse http://localhost:40080
</Location>

Note

If you're using an Arch Linux based OS. You will have to access /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf to enable modules and change configuration.

Nginx

Setting Nginx up is slightly simpler than Apache, all you need is the Nginx package itself. Once you've installed it, go to the configuration file (usually a .conf file located in /etc/nginx) and add the following lines to your server section (replace localhost and 40080 with the address and port you defined for your Crow App):

location / {
    proxy_pass http://localhost:40080/;
    proxy_http_version 1.1;
}

Remember to remove or comment out any existing location / section.

Alternatively, if you want to use a subdirectory, you can simply change the location parameter as such:

location /crow/ {
    proxy_pass http://localhost:40080/;
    proxy_http_version 1.1;
}