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I would like to implement some live elements to an existing PHP app. So i installed Node.js and set it on to listen on port let s say 3000 as the Nginx server is currently serving my PHP app on port 80.

SO far so good, node server works great and i can hit it from php with cURL. Now the problem is that i need to open a connection from an html (serverd by the PHP framework on ngix) so at localhost/index.html to a the node server at localhost:3000. So this mean having to make cross domain ajax call and it get messy.. For those who haven't tried it's basically not possible (without ugly hacks) to make an ajax call on a sub domain or a different port on the same server.

Would anyone see a better way to implement this whole setup ?

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Write the whole thing in NodeJS? ;) – Brendan Long Mar 19 '12 at 17:19
Use WebSockets rather than AJAX calls? – Dan Prince Mar 19 '12 at 17:28
Yes i might, do you know if this will work with the cross request issue ? – silkAdmin Mar 19 '12 at 17:34

3 Answers

up vote 4 down vote accepted

You are on the right path with Nginx. Since you must stay on the same domain and port, you can redirect a certain folder request to your Node. Something like this:

  location ~ /ajax/* {                                                  
    proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:8080;                                                                
    break;                                                                                                        
  }

The other solution is to use CORS: http://enable-cors.org/ It works beautifully on all modern browsers except IE.

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THanks Mauvis, i eneded up with a proxy setup like you advised, but now i am stuck with a caching problem, the nginx server seems to be cahing request not mater how i configure it.. – silkAdmin Mar 20 '12 at 4:25
Not sure what you mean but you can download Charles Debugging Proxy and post the logs if you want me to check them out. You can add a rand param (javascript timestamp) to your ajax call to ensure its always a new response as well. – Mauvis Ledford Mar 20 '12 at 7:54
up vote 0 down vote

You could set it up to sort-of reverse proxy the request... send the AJAX call to your main domain, say, example.com/?proxy=live&restofrequest. Have nginx rewrite that to the appropriate domain:port for the node.js server.

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i tried that but then when i make my request to ( taking back your example ) example.com/?proxy=live&restofrequest i will get a 302 temporarly moved error. – silkAdmin Mar 19 '12 at 17:46
Hmm... fair enough, and I'm not familiar enough with nginx URL rewriting to know if there's a way around that. – Jason Mar 19 '12 at 17:52
Try this for reverse proxying: tumblr.intranation.com/post/766288369/using-nginx-reverse-proxy – Jason Mar 20 '12 at 15:11
up vote 1 down vote

Even without knowing the full purpose, I wouldn't expose a home-brewed server setting. But if you really need to, you can do it the old fashioned way, via script-tag proxy. (<script src="http://external.host.com:...").

You can append a url parameter request_id to script address and have that script come back with the request id in the form of if(typeof($)==='object' && typeof($.trigger)==='function')$.trigger('requestCompleted',request_id); something like that.

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So you mean i open the connection with the node server on page load ? If so i don think i got the second part, do yo mind clarifying how do i get data back this way ? Also probably dumb question, but why wouldn t you expose the node server? If were to build the whole app in node it would have to be exposed right ? – silkAdmin Mar 19 '12 at 17:33
He's been misdirected by localhost, thinking your client is accessing it through localhost rather than PHP accessing something local to the webserver through cURL. – Jason Mar 19 '12 at 17:38
@Jason OP talks about the Node server listening to nodeserver.site.com or www.site.com:3000 and request coming from www.site.com. I don't think I missed anything. @silkAdmin Use URL parameters in script src; send data from Node to browser using var data = JSON.stringify(); this data variable you'll be able to access it from www.site.com's script. It's like including any other script actually. Google script tag proxy. In terms of exposing Node, Node is not Apache or your main webserver so in the absence of host firewall, it may be subject to various security concerns. – GRIGORE-TURBODISEL Mar 19 '12 at 20:51
Sorry, I misunderstood "home-brewed server setting" to mean hosting your site on a local PC. – Jason Mar 19 '12 at 22:36
Thanks GRIGORE, it s actully a good tip i ll try it out. – silkAdmin Mar 20 '12 at 4:27

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