[BlueOnyx:21054] Re: Node.js-Support for BlueOnyx?

[Darren Wolfe]

Hi,

I don't have much of an opinion on Node itself although it's a good idea to include it, as it is getting popular, but there are a few things that I feel BX needs to look at given how the world of hosting and web development is always changing.

The first thing is related to the public root of a vsite - I think we need to be able to change this from /web to an arbitrary folder within the vsite
The reason is that php based web application frameworks - Laravel, Zend etc, are not designed to have the entire set of files publicly accessible in /web, instead they are structured like this.

/app
/bootstrap
/vendor
/public
(and others)
With the /public folder being the one that http requests go to. In index.php this calls "../bootstrap/autoload.php" which loads the framework.

I've been able to work around this by putting everything in /project (So not to clutter up the vsite root), removing the /web directory then recreating it as a symlink to /project/public - this works, because php seems to take all the __DIR__ references as from the "source", not the "destination" of the symlink.
Whether this would cause problems if I were to do a cmuexport and import, or screws up the disk usage calculations, I don't know.

The second thing is that I think we should be able to rename or disable the httpd rewrites that are automatically imposed on a vsite that redirects the user to the BX control panel. (/admin)

Lastly, we need to consider the increasing use of https-by-default.
There has been a bug in BX going back as far as I can remember (To the cobalt RAQ days) which I have brought up on the mailing list before, but never got a resolution to - if you have multiple vsites on one IP, then you configure one of those vsites for SSL, then you attempt to go to https://www.notthedomainwithssl.com, you get given the certificate for the SSL enabled domain (Which is not valid as it's the wrong domain) then redirected to the SSL enabled vsite.
This is a problem not only because it's not what the visitor expects but because browser vendors are working towards trying to connect to websites using https first, which in the above case is going to fail if you wanted to go to www.notthedomainwithssl.com
I can see only three options:
1. Obtain SSL certificates for ALL domains (Either purchased or using lets encrypt) and always enable SSL for new ones - build it into your hosting fees.
2. Move domains that are SSL enabled to one public IP, and keep domains that do not have SSL on a different public IP, so they correctly fail when attempting to connect with https.
3. Fix the problem, where entering https://www.notthedomainwithssl.com fails, as it should do, regardless of what public IP is used.

The correct solution, in my opinion, would be option 3 (because it's a bug that needs to be fixed, and it makes us hosts looks bad when someone sees it) followed closely by option 1, since it's something that we're all going to have to do eventually anyway.


-----Original Message-----
From: Blueonyx [mailto:blueonyx-bounces at mail.blueonyx.it] On Behalf Of Michael Stauber
Sent: 22 May 2017 19:37
To: 'BlueOnyx General Mailing List' <blueonyx at blueonyx.it>
Subject: [BlueOnyx:21053] Node.js-Support for BlueOnyx?

Hi all,

In a recent discussion with Dirk Estenfeld we were talking about Node.js
and if it would be possible or prudent to add a Node.js server component
to BlueOnyx (5207R, 5208R and 5209R).

Technically it wouldn't be much of a problem to add this in a similar
way that we already do for Tomcat. Meaning: It would be optional and if
needed you could activate it on a per Vsite basis if the general Node.js
support for the server itself is enabled.

But before I contemplate this further I'd like to hear if there is an
actual need for it and if you would like to have this feature added.

Or if there is any other feature which we currently don't have and that
you'd like to see.

-- 
With best regards

Michael Stauber
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