web server: REST API “forwarder”

Question

We have a REST API in our application, however we do not wish to put the server which provides this API in a web-accessible location.

I would like to install something in a web-accessible server which would forward the calls to my server. Ideally it would have a configuration to only forward GETs, or to forward everything.

Does such a thing exist or will I have to roll out my own?

Answer 1

The term that you're looking for is "reverse proxy" - it doesn't need to be specifically built to handle a REST API, just normal HTTP connections (with the method filter that you mentioned).

Apache or nginx should fit your needs well.

Answer 2

What you're looking for is generally called a proxy or a reverse proxy. Some common ones are:

• Nginx http://nginx.org/
• Varnish https://www.varnish-cache.org/
• Cherokee http://www.cherokee-project.com/
• Squid (probably the most stable and popular) http://www.squid-cache.org/
• Apache with mod_proxy http://httpd.apache.org/

Filtering everything but GET requests can be done with special rules on each of those. I imagine IIS could be setup as a reverse proxy as well, but I'm not familiar enough with IIS to know.