Running in a sub folder with Apache

If you want to run your server in a subfolder like https://your.domain.com/chat/ you have to setup a reverse proxy. See Run pimentaCHAT behind a SSL Reverse Proxy

If you are using apache you have to tweak the configuration. First you have to put the Rewrite/Proxy into a Location-tag. For example, if you want to provide the service under the “chat” subfolder, your config should look like this:

<Location /chat>
    Order allow,deny
    Allow from all

    RewriteEngine On
    RewriteCond %{HTTP:Upgrade} =websocket [NC]
    RewriteRule /var/www/(.*)           ws://localhost:3000/$1 [P,L]
    RewriteCond %{HTTP:Upgrade} !=websocket [NC]
    RewriteRule /var/www/(.*)           http://localhost:3000/$1 [P,L]

    ProxyPassReverse http://localhost:3000
</Location>

The main difference to the standard reverse proxy configuration is an additional RewriteRule, /var/www in the example, which must be changed to your DocumentRoot (if it’s not already your DocumentRoot).

If you pass the whole path, including the DocumentRoot to the pimentaCHAT server, you’ll get a 404 response and an Unknown path server error.

In our example we used the /chat as subfolder (it’s parsed out of the ROOT_URL provided) but the pimentaCHAT server gets a request for /var/www/chat, detects a mismatch and returns the above mentioned error.

Additional notes:

• Using the RewriteBase Directive won’t work.
• The ProxyPassReverse can be used inside a Location-tag and the first parameter must be omitted in this case.
• You don’t need to configure a Location for the root folder / when using pimentaCHAT in a subfolder (it’s likely configured for other stuff already in this case).
• For the those curious about the details: the mentioned path-handling is in webapp.js, search for Unknown path.
• Please make sure that the modules rewrite, proxy_http and proxy_wstunnel are enabled in the apache configuration. Otherwise the websocket calls will return a 500 http response.

Running the application

To run in a subfolder you should pass the environment variable ROOT_URL to the process. For example:

ROOT_URL=https://your.domain.com/chat/ node main.js

If you followed the manual installation guide, you may already have configured (and persisted) this environment variable - in this case you can ignore this advice.

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