RE: Reverse Proxy and Link Encoding

[Michael Naef <michael.naef () inf ethz ch>]

Hi Lluis

> handling FORMs might be a problem:
>
> In a link you know that all the parameters will be the same when the user
> hits the link (unless javascript is used to modify URLs), so you can store
> them in a database and then match the proxy code to the URL with parameters
> and forward that. But in forms, you can have user-dependent data such as
> "text" inputs that you can not remove from the page sent to the client - so
> you are forced to accept data from a client (unless you want to strip forms
> out of the application...). Any thoughts on how this could be accomplished
> with yor proposed scheme?

You are right. Such a proxy would be rather restrictive. Forms would not 
be supported and maybe other web functionality as well -- it is quite 
likely that I have not thought of all the consequences yet.

However, plain basic web browsing would be possible -- enough to read 
regular web pages, manuals, or do HTTP downloads etc. (BTW: That is what I 
meant to express with the paragraph quoted below from my original post.)

Regards
myke.


> -----Mensaje original-----
> De: Michael Naef [mailto:michael.naef () inf ethz ch]
[...]
> I am aware that such a proxy is quite prohibitive with regard to browsing
> the web. However, it can be useful in environments that must prevent
> potentially hostile traffic (e.g. "hacked" URLs, malformed POST data etc.)
> to leave to the Internet and still allow basic browsing capabilities.
[...]