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burnersk
Asked: 2016-03-04 02:06:43 +0800 CST

How to pass GeoIP HTTP request headers to backend with Apache?

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I am using nginx to proxy HTTP requests to a PHP application running in the scope of Apache 2.4 (mod_php5) within a Docker container (cbeer/piwik).

                     +------------------------------+
                     |        Docker Container      |
+-------+            |  +--------+          +-----+ |
| nginx |----------->|->| apache |--------->| php | |
+-------+ proxy_pass |  +--------+ mod_php5 +-----+ |
                     +------------------------------+

The PHP application is Piwik 2.16.

I inject GeoIP HTTP headers with nginx:

proxy_set_header GeoIP-Addr             "$remote_addr";
proxy_set_header GeoIP-Country-Code     "$geoip_country_code";
proxy_set_header GeoIP-Country-Name     "$geoip_country_name";
proxy_set_header GeoIP-Continent-Code   "$geoip_city_continent_code";
proxy_set_header GeoIP-Region-Name      "$geoip_region_name";
proxy_set_header GeoIP-Region           "$geoip_region";
proxy_set_header GeoIP-City             "$geoip_city";
proxy_set_header GeoIP-Metro-Code       "$geoip_dma_code";
proxy_set_header GeoIP-Area-Code        "$geoip_area_code";
proxy_set_header GeoIP-Latitude         "$geoip_latitude";
proxy_set_header GeoIP-Longitude        "$geoip_longitude";
proxy_set_header GeoIP-Postal-Code      "$geoip_postal_code";
proxy_set_header GeoIP-Isp              "$geoip_org";
proxy_set_header GeoIP-Organization     "$geoip_org";
proxy_set_header GeoIP-Netspeed         "";

Unfortunately Piwik (at least thinks it) cannot see the via nginx injected request HTTP headers. On the Piwik settings page for geolocationing is a warning about Piwik could not find GeoIP variables within PHP's $_SERVER. The GeoIP headers arrive as e.g. HTTP_GEOIP_ADDR but have to be GEOIP_ADDR. I also cannot edit the application to get use of these "new" header names.

@RichardSmith mentioned that I have to map HTTP_GEOIP_ variables to GEOIP_ within Apache using setenv. I tried several combinations but I did not get managed to use variables (request headers) as values for the environment variable.

SetEnv GEOIP_ADDR "%{HTTP_GEOIP_ADDR}e"

This results into the actual string "%{HTTP_GEOIP_CITY}e" stored in the variable instead of the value of HTTP_GEOIP_CITY.

How to map HTTP_GEOIP_ variables to GEOIP_ within Apache using setenv?

nginx

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    Your assumption on Apache's SetEnv directive syntax is wrong.

    From the documentation, it seems it's the other way around:

    SetEnv HTTP_GEOIP_ADDR %{GeoIP-Addr}e

    Here is the link for the documentation:

    https://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.4/mod/mod_env.html#setenv

    It states that Sets an internal environment variable, which is then available to Apache HTTP Server modules, and passed on to CGI scripts and SSI pages.

    Example

SetEnv SPECIAL_PATH /foo/bin

    So, if you swap your declaration, might work.

    • 2