Sun ONE Web Proxy Server 3.6 SP2 Administrator's Guide - NT Version |
Chapter 4 Managing Templates and Resources
Templates allow you to group URLs together so that you can configure how the proxy handles them. You can make the proxy behave differently depending on the URL the client tries to retrieve. For example, you might require the client to authenticate (type in a user name and password) when accessing URLs from a specific domain. Or, you might deny access to URLs that point to image files. You can configure different cache refresh settings based on the file type (keep some files in the cache longer than others).
What is a Template?
A template is a collection of URLs, called resources. A resource might be a single URL, a group of URLs that have something in common, or an entire protocol. You name and create a template and then you assign URLs to that template by using regular expressions. This means that you can configure the proxy server to handle requests for various URLs differently. Any URL pattern you can create with regular expressions can be included in a template. Table 4-1 lists the default resources and provides some ideas for other templates.
Understanding Regular Expressions
Sun ONE Web Proxy Server allows you to use regular expressions to identify resources. Regular expressions specify a pattern of character strings. In the proxy server, regular expressions are used to find matching patterns in URLs.
Here is an example of a regular expression:
[a-z]*://[^:/]*\.abc\.com.*>
This regular expression would match any documents from the .abc.com domain. The documents could be of any protocol and could have any file extension.
Table 4-2 contains regular expressions and their corresponding meanings.
This example illustrates how you can use some of the regular expressions in Table 4-2.
[a-z]*://([^.:/]*[:/]|.*\.local\.com).*"
- [a-z]* matches a document of any protocol.
- :// matches a (:) followed by (//).
- [^.:/]*[:/] matches any character string that does not include a (.),(:) or (/), and is followed by either a (:) or a (/). It therefore matches host names that are not fully qualified and hosts with port numbers.
- |.*\.local\.com does not match fully qualified domain name host names such as local.com but does match documents in the .local.com domain.
- .*" matches documents with any file extension.
Note As noted in Table 4-2, the backslash can be used to escape or remove the meaning of special characters. Characters such as the period and question mark have special meanings, and therefore, must be escaped if they are used to represent themselves. The period, in particular, is found in many URLs. So, to remove the special meaning of the period in your regular expression, you need to precede it with a backslash.
Understanding Wildcard Patterns
You can create lists of wildcard patterns that enable you to specify which URLs can be accessed from your site. Wildcards can be in the form of regular expressions or shell expressions, depending on usage. As a general rule:
- Use regular expressions for any pattern that matches destination URLs. This includes <Object ppath=...>, URL filters, and the NameTrans, PathCheck, and ObjectType functions.
- Use shell expressions for any pattern that matches incoming client or user IDs, including user names and groups for access control and the IP addresses or DNS names of incoming users (for example, <Client dns=...>).
You can specify several URLs by using regular expression wildcard patterns. Wildcards let you filter by domain name or by any URL with a given word in the URL. For example, you might want to block access to URLs that contain the string "sex." To do this, you could specify http://.*sex.* as the regular expression for the template.
Creating Templates
You can create a template using a regular expression wildcard pattern. You can then configure aspects that affect only the URLs specified in that template. For example, you might use one type of caching configuration for .GIF images and another for plain .HTML files.
To create a template,
- From the Server Manager, choose Templates|New Templates.
The Create a New Template form appears.
- In the Template Name field, type a name for the template you're creating and click OK.
The name should be something you can easily remember. The Server Manager prompts you to save and apply your changes. You can save the changes after you create a regular expression for the template, as described in the remaining steps.
- Click Templates|Apply Template.
The Apply a Configuration Template form appears.
- Type a regular expression wildcard pattern that includes all of the URLs you want to include in your template.
- From the list, select the name of the new template you just added.
- Click OK.
Viewing and Removing Templates
You can view the templates created in the Server Manager. To do this, choose Templates|View Template. The templates are shown in a table that lists the regular expression for the template and the template name. To edit an existing template, click the Edit link, which takes you to the Apply form.
You can also remove existing templates. Removing a template deletes all of the associated configurations for the template. For example, if you have access control set up for all URLs in the template TEST, removing the TEST template also removes the access control to the URLs contained in then template.
To remove a template,
- From the Server Manager, choose Templates|Remove Templates.
- Choose the template from the Remove list.
- Click OK.
Removing Resources
You can delete an entire regular expression object and its corresponding configurations with the Remove an Existing Resource form. For instance, you can remove the gopher resource so that all settings associated with that resource will be removed from the proxy server's configuration files.
To remove a resource,
- From the Server Manager, choose Templates|Remove Resource. The Remove an Existing Resource form appears.
- Select the resource you want to remove by either choosing it from the Remove pull-down menu or clicking the Regular Expression button, entering a regular expression, and clicking OK.
- Click OK.
Online Forms for Controlling Resources
This section briefly lists the features that use templates. The features are listed along with information on how to access the Server Manager forms and where to find descriptions of the features:
- Accessing a resource (Server Preferences|Restrict Access). See Restricting Access.
- Accessing specific URLs (Filters|URL Filters). See Restricting Access.
- Caching (Caching|Configuration). See Configuring the Cache.
- Proxying (Routing|Enable, Disable). See Enabling Proxying for a Resource.
- Routing (Routing|Routing). See Configuring Routing for a Resource.
- Setting logging preferences (Status|Log Preferences). See Setting Access Log Preferences.
- Mapping URLs to mirror sites (URLs|Create Mappings). See Mapping URLs to Other URLs.