Comment 13 for bug 1964829

There's a workaround available that should be applicable to many situations: combined ProxyPass with RewriteRule [P] flag:

One can do reverse proxying with mod_proxy ProxyPass but also with mod_rewrite RewriteRule [P] flag. The former often is "better", because it uses a pool of persistent connections to the origin server and the characteristics of the connections can be configured in more detail.

What is possible here, is a combination of both approaches: Use a "dummy" ProxyPass with short right side URI to configure a pool to the origin server but RewriteRule for the individual proxy rules containing the long target URLs. As long as the right side of the ProxyPass matches thebeginning of the RewriteRule target URL, the proxying will be done via the connection pool configured with ProxyPass.

An Example:

# This directive must come before the following one in order
# block access to arbitrary URIs on the origin server!
# As an alternative one can also use "RewriteRule /UNUSED - [F]"
ProxyPass /UNUSED !

# Configure a connection pool for the origin server
# http://myserver.example.org:9081
ProxyPass /UNUSED http://myserver.example.org:9081

RewriteEngine On

# Proxy "/long" to a long URI on the origin server,
# [P] flag at end of line is important
RewriteRule /long http://myserver.example.org:9081/aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa/bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb/long.html [P]

# Proxy "/verylong" to an even longer URI on the origin server,
# again [P] flag at end of line is important
RewriteRule /verylong http://myserver.example.org:9081/aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa/bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb/cccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccc/dddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddd/verylong.html [P]

Pro:

- you can use long origin server URIs
- the requests are still dispatched to a pool of persistent connections
- You can combine this with ProxyPassReverse and similar directives

Con:

- all requests to this origin server will use the same connection pool, not one pool per target URI. This might be a con in some cases (less separation), in some it might actually be a pro (sharing of resources)
- need a combination of two different syntaxes (harder to understand)
- might not work for any protocol to the origin server (ajp, fcgi, scgi etc.), I simply haven't tested it for those.