In the vast majority of cases, http redirections are installed on the http server.
However, the redirection cannot be installed in the http server config in some cases.
Example: mobile phone redirection.
We want to redirect all mobile phones from http://www.mysite.com to http://mobile.mysite.com
The client type is done with the HTTP User-Agent header sent by the browser. Problem: Squid will put in cache only one version of the query to http://www.mysite.com. The response from the cache will probably be the home page, not the 301 redirection.
It’s also possible to configure the HTTP server to add the Vary: User-Agent header to tell Squid to store one version by browser. With this the cache will be split (one cache per browser), lowering a lot the cache efficiency.
Here is the solution:
################################### # we redirect mobiles to mobile.mysite.com url_rewrite_program /etc/squid/redirect_mobile.sh acl symbian browser Symbian acl iphone browser iP(hone|od) acl mobile_url dstdomain mobile.monsite.com url_rewrite_access deny mobile_url url_rewrite_access allow symbian url_rewrite_access allow iphone url_rewrite_access deny all
And the /etc/squid/redirect_mobile.sh script simply contains:
#!/bin/sh
while read line
do
echo "301:http://mobile.mysite.com"
done
Notes:
- The mobile detection method is far from being exhaustive. If you know a simple method covering 95% of browsers, I’m interested!
- With more recent Squid versions (3, 2.HEAD), you can use a better method using internal redirectors.
Links:
Hi,
I’m stuck with this problem right now. Here’s a more thorough header detection script:
http://mobiforge.com/developing/story/lightweight-device-detection-php
I ended up investigating javascript solutions. It’s not perfect, but this seems pretty good:
http://blog.sebarmeli.com/2010/11/02/how-to-redirect-your-site-to-a-mobile-version-through-javascript/