Rails - Jul 2006 - IE vs Firefox -- http:// matters?

I just noticed something interesting (or not) about getting to my RoR 
app on the 2 browsers. I''ve tested it running Webrick or Mongrel_rails 
and get the same behavior.

The app is at http://www.mydomain.com:myport#/app/list

Specifying that complete URL works fine in both browsers. However in IE 
if you just specify www.mydomain.com:myport#/app/list I get page not 
found. In FF the URL without the http:// works fine.

I know down the road we need to update our server to use Apache with 
fastcgi or lighttpd rather than using webrick or mongrel, but I am 
curious as to why this is happening and how to "fix" it if possible.

Our server is a standard Centos server with numerous virtual servers 
running on it. mydomain.com is just one account of many that happens to 
be where I am developing a ruby app. To start my server I merely cd app 
then start webrick or mongrel_rails. I have done nothing further for 
routing etc.

-- 
Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.

my guess is that the port # is throwing IE off.

Mike Kogan wrote:
> I just noticed something interesting (or not) about getting to my RoR 
> app on the 2 browsers. I''ve tested it running Webrick or
Mongrel_rails
> and get the same behavior.
>
> The app is at http://www.mydomain.com:myport#/app/list
>
> Specifying that complete URL works fine in both browsers. However in IE 
> if you just specify www.mydomain.com:myport#/app/list I get page not 
> found. In FF the URL without the http:// works fine.
>
> I know down the road we need to update our server to use Apache with 
> fastcgi or lighttpd rather than using webrick or mongrel, but I am 
> curious as to why this is happening and how to "fix" it if
possible.
>
> Our server is a standard Centos server with numerous virtual servers 
> running on it. mydomain.com is just one account of many that happens to 
> be where I am developing a ruby app. To start my server I merely cd app 
> then start webrick or mongrel_rails. I have done nothing further for 
> routing etc.
>
>

On Jul 10, 2006, at 9:18 AM, Mike Kogan wrote:
> I just noticed something interesting (or not) about getting to my RoR
> app on the 2 browsers. I''ve tested it running Webrick or
Mongrel_rails
> and get the same behavior.
>
> The app is at http://www.mydomain.com:myport#/app/list
>
> Specifying that complete URL works fine in both browsers. However  
> in IE
> if you just specify www.mydomain.com:myport#/app/list I get page not
> found. In FF the URL without the http:// works fine.
>
> I know down the road we need to update our server to use Apache with
> fastcgi or lighttpd rather than using webrick or mongrel, but I am
> curious as to why this is happening and how to "fix" it if
possible.
>
> Our server is a standard Centos server with numerous virtual servers
> running on it. mydomain.com is just one account of many that  
> happens to
> be where I am developing a ruby app. To start my server I merely cd  
> app
> then start webrick or mongrel_rails. I have done nothing further for
> routing etc.
If the port is a problem, you should also be able to configure apache  
as a transparent proxy.
-Mat

On 7/10/06, Mike Kogan <mike@kogan.org> wrote:
> The app is at http://www.mydomain.com:myport#/app/list
>
> Specifying that complete URL works fine in both browsers. However in IE
> if you just specify www.mydomain.com:myport#/app/list I get page not
> found. In FF the URL without the http:// works fine.
>
> I know down the road we need to update our server to use Apache with
> fastcgi or lighttpd rather than using webrick or mongrel, but I am
> curious as to why this is happening and how to "fix" it if
possible.
IE cannot access urls on non-standard ports without a full url
(including the protocol).  Without changing the port to 80, there''s no
way to get around this (as Apache, webrick, mongrel, etc. never get
sent the request).

Tom

Tom Ward wrote:
> On 7/10/06, Mike Kogan <mike@kogan.org> wrote:
> 
>> The app is at http://www.mydomain.com:myport#/app/list
>>
>> Specifying that complete URL works fine in both browsers. However in IE
>> if you just specify www.mydomain.com:myport#/app/list I get page not
>> found. In FF the URL without the http:// works fine.
>>
>> I know down the road we need to update our server to use Apache with
>> fastcgi or lighttpd rather than using webrick or mongrel, but I am
>> curious as to why this is happening and how to "fix" it if
possible.
> 
> IE cannot access urls on non-standard ports without a full url
> (including the protocol).  Without changing the port to 80,
there''s no
> way to get around this (as Apache, webrick, mongrel, etc. never get
> sent the request).
> 
> Tom
This is what I was thinking as well, I don''t know of anything else that
would cause it.

with IE  "host.domain:port/page" will not work but 
"http://host.domain:port/page" will.

As was mentioned this only has to do with the browser not sending the 
request, there''s you can do to change the behavior.

-- 
Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.

On Jul 10, 2006, at 9:18 AM, Mike Kogan wrote:
> I just noticed something interesting (or not) about getting to my RoR
> app on the 2 browsers. I''ve tested it running Webrick or
Mongrel_rails
> and get the same behavior.
>
> The app is at http://www.mydomain.com:myport#/app/list
>
> Specifying that complete URL works fine in both browsers. However  
> in IE
> if you just specify www.mydomain.com:myport#/app/list I get page not
> found. In FF the URL without the http:// works fine.
>
> I know down the road we need to update our server to use Apache with
> fastcgi or lighttpd rather than using webrick or mongrel, but I am
> curious as to why this is happening and how to "fix" it if
possible.
I ran into a related issue a few days ago.  If you look into the  
RFC2396 for the "Uniform Resource Identifiers (URI): Generic Syntax"  
http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2396.txt, you''ll discover that without the  
http: this is indistinguishable from an opaque URI for the scheme  
"www.mydomain.com:".  (Read Section 3 or take my word for it ;-)

FF decides to "guess" that you might mean http:// probably after  
failing to recognize the URI as entered.  I hate to say that IE might  
actually be doing it right (that almost hurts to say).

I discovered the problem only because I always type the scheme, but   
someone else didn''t and the way that the code attempted to resolve  
the problem had a bug (naturally) when just a hostname was given.

-Rob

Rob Biedenharn		http://agileconsultingllc.com
Rob@AgileConsultingLLC.com

On Mon, 2006-07-10 at 15:18 +0200, Mike Kogan wrote:
> I just noticed something interesting (or not) about getting to my RoR 
> app on the 2 browsers. I''ve tested it running Webrick or
Mongrel_rails
> and get the same behavior.
> 
> The app is at http://www.mydomain.com:myport#/app/list
> 
That''s not a valid URL.  Requests to web servers have to be of the
form:

  scheme '':'' ''//'' host
('':'' port) ''/'' (relative path)

Without the leading slash the request is basically junk.  I''m guessing
firefox is throwing in some extra slashes to keep the server happy, but
if you just drop the # then you''re good.  Or, use the full URI path
(like everyone else on the internet).

Is there a compelling reason that you''re using this type of URI?
> Specifying that complete URL works fine in both browsers. However in IE 
> if you just specify www.mydomain.com:myport#/app/list I get page not 
> found. In FF the URL without the http:// works fine.
> 
> I know down the road we need to update our server to use Apache with 
> fastcgi or lighttpd rather than using webrick or mongrel, but I am 
> curious as to why this is happening and how to "fix" it if
possible.
> 
Another question:  why do you have to move to fastcgi?  Because the
above URI won''t work?

You should also turn on debugging and see what the logs in
log/mongrel_debug/ tell you:

  mongrel_rails start -B

Then look at log/mongrel_debug/rails.log for information on what rails
is receiving from Mongrel, and log/mongrel_debug/files.log for what
Mongrel thinks the URI is.

-- 
Zed A. Shaw
http://www.zedshaw.com/
http://mongrel.rubyforge.org/
http://www.railsmachine.com/ -- Need Mongrel support?

Well I enabled the mongrel debugging and as Tom above pointed (I 
believe) the request never gets that far. Someone mentioned configuring 
Apach as a transparent proxy. I haven''t really done much Apache 
diddling, could someone elaborate on how to do this for a specific 
domain and port to map my application?

Also thanks for all the great responses. The Rails community is quite 
extensive and very supportive to those of us coming up to speed.

-- 
Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.

> > The app is at http://www.mydomain.com:myport#/app/list
> >
>
> That''s not a valid URL.
Just to clarify, while that''s probably not something you want to be
confusing webservers with, it -is- a valid URI according to RFC 3986.
(FYI, Rob, http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3986.txt obsoletes RFC 2396.)

Parsed out, it works out to:

scheme: "http"
authority: "www.mydomain.com:myport"
path: ""
query: nil
fragment: "/app/list"

If you apply the simple scheme-based normalization algorithm (in this
case, http-based) described in RFC 3986, you end up with the following
URI, and I believe that''s what Firefox does:

http://www.mydomain.com:myport/#/app/list

Cheers,
Bob Aman
--
AIM: sporkmonger
Jabber: sporkmonger@jabber.org

Just guessing, but # in this case probably stands for number, i.e. my port
number, not a literal pound/hash/whatever sign.

--- rails@lists.rubyonrails.org
wrote:
> > The app is at http://www.mydomain.com:myport#/app/list
> > >
> >
> > That''s not a valid URL.
> 
> Just to clarify, while that''s probably
not something you want to be
> confusing webservers with, it -is- a valid
URI according to RFC 3986.
> (FYI, Rob, http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3986.txt
obsoletes RFC 2396.)
> 
> Parsed out, it works out to:
> 
> scheme: "http"
> authority: "www.mydomain.com:myport"
> path: ""
> query: nil
> fragment:
"/app/list"
> 
> If you apply the simple scheme-based normalization algorithm
(in this
> case, http-based) described in RFC 3986, you end up with the following
> URI, and I believe that''s what Firefox does:
> 
> http://www.mydomain.com:myport/#/app/list
> 
> Cheers,
> Bob Aman
> --
> AIM: sporkmonger
> Jabber: sporkmonger@jabber.org
> _______________________________________________
> Rails mailing list
> Rails@lists.rubyonrails.org
> http://lists.rubyonrails.org/mailman/listinfo/rails
>

On Jul 10, 2006, at 3:00 PM, Bob Aman wrote:
> Just to clarify, while that''s probably not something you want to
be
> confusing webservers with, it -is- a valid URI according to RFC 3986.
> (FYI, Rob, http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3986.txt obsoletes RFC 2396.)
Hadn''t seen that one.  The uri code in 1.8.4 still refers to 2396.

Thanks,
-Rob

Rob Biedenharn		http://agileconsultingllc.com
Rob@AgileConsultingLLC.com