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This page contains content that we have migrated from Jetty 7 or Jetty 8 documentation into the correct format, but we have not yet audited it for technical accuracy in with Jetty 9. Be aware that examples or information contained on this page may be incorrect. Please check back soon as we continue improving the documentation, or submit corrections yourself to this page through Github. Thank you.

Configuring Virtual Hosts

Configuring a Virtual Host
Configuring Different Webapps for Different Virtual Hosts
Configuring Different Webapps for Different Virtual Hosts, But at the Same Context Path
Configuring Virtual Hosts with Non-ascii Characters

A virtual host is an alternative name, registered in DNS, for an IP address. Virtual hosting takes one of two forms:

Jetty users often want to configure their web applications taking into account these different virtual hosts. Frequently, a machine with a single IP address has different DNS resolvable names associated with it, and a webapp deployed on it must be reachable from all of the alternative names. Another possibility is to serve different web applications from different virtual hosts.

You can set virtual hosts in various ways, including:

For descriptions of the various ways to configure Jetty, including links to documents that provide detailed configuration instructions, see ???.

The examples that follow set virtual hosts in the preferred way, by calling the method ContextHandler. setVirtualHosts.

Configuring a Virtual Host

When configuring a web application, you can supply a list of IP addresses and names at which the web application is reachable. Suppose you have a machine with these IP addresses and DNS resolvable names:

  • 333.444.555.666

  • 127.0.0.1

  • www.blah.com

  • www.blah.net

  • www.blah.org

Suppose you have a webapp, xxx.war, that you want all of the above names and addresses to serve. You would configure the webapp as follows:

<Configure class="org.eclipse.jetty.webapp.WebAppContext">
  <Set name="contextPath">/xxx</Set>
  <Set name="war"><SystemProperty name="jetty.home"/>/webapps/xxx.war</Set>
  <Set name="virtualHosts">
    <Array type="java.lang.String">
      <Item>333.444.555.666</Item>
      <Item>127.0.0.1</Item>
      <Item>www.blah.com</Item>
      <Item>www.blah.net</Item>
      <Item>www.blah.org</Item>
    </Array>
  </Set>
</Configure>      

Assuming you have configured a connector listening on port 8080, webapp xxx.war is available at all of the following addresses:

  • http://333.444.555.666:8080/xxx

  • http://127.0.0.1:8080/xxx

  • http://www.blah.com:8080/xxx

  • http://www.blah.net:8080/xxx

  • http://www.blah.org:8080/xxx

Configuring Different Webapps for Different Virtual Hosts

You can configure different webapps for different virtual hosts by supplying a different list of virtual hosts for each webapp. For example, suppose your imaginary machine has these DNS names and IP addresses:

  • 333.444.555.666

  • 127.0.0.1

  • www.blah.com

  • www.blah.net

  • www.blah.org

  • 777.888.888.111

  • www.other.com

  • www.other.net

  • www.other.org

Suppose also you have another webapp, zzz.war. You want xxx.war to deploy as above, and zzz.war to deploy only from 777.888.888.111, www.other.com, www.other.net and www.other.org:

<!-- webapp xxx.war -->
<Configure class="org.eclipse.jetty.webapp.WebAppContext">
  <Set name="contextPath">/xxx</Set>
  <Set name="war"><SystemProperty name="jetty.home"/>/webapps/xxx.war</Set>
  <Set name="virtualHosts">
    <Array type="java.lang.String">
      <Item>333.444.555.666</Item>
      <Item>127.0.0.1</Item>
      <Item>www.blah.com</Item>
      <Item>www.blah.net</Item>
      <Item>www.blah.org</Item>
    </Array>
  </Set>
</Configure>
<!-- webapp zzz.war -->
<Configure class="org.eclipse.jetty.webapp.WebAppContext">
  <Set name="contextPath">/zzz</Set>
  <Set name="war"><SystemProperty name="jetty.home"/>/webapps/zzz.war</Set>
  <Set name="virtualHosts">
    <Array type="java.lang.String">
      <Item>777.888.888.111</Item>
      <Item>www.other.com</Item>
      <Item>www.other.net</Item>
      <Item>www.other.org</Item>
    </Array>
  </Set>
</Configure>

Webapp xxx.war is still available at:

  • http://333.444.555.666:8080/xxx

  • http://127.0.0.1:8080/xxx

  • http://www.blah.com:8080/xxx

  • http://www.blah.net:8080/xxx

  • http://www.blah.org:8080/xxx

But now webapp ''zzz.war'' is available at:

  • http://777.888.888.111:8080/zzz

  • http://www.other.com:8080/zzz

  • http://www.other.net:8080/zzz

  • http://www.other.org:8080/zzz

Configuring Different Webapps for Different Virtual Hosts, But at the Same Context Path

In the example above, webapp zzz.war is available not only at a certain set of virtual hosts, but also at the context path /zzz, whilst the other webapp is available at both a different set of virtual hosts, and at a different context path. What happens if you want them at the same context path, but still at different sets of virtual hosts? You just supply the same context path for each webapp, leaving the disjoint set of virtual host definitions as before:

<Configure class="org.eclipse.jetty.webapp.WebAppContext">
  <Set name="war"><SystemProperty name="jetty.home"/>/webapps/xxx.war</Set>
  <Set name="contextPath">/</Set>
  <Set name="virtualHosts">
    <Array type="java.lang.String">
      <Item>333.444.555.666</Item>
      <Item>127.0.0.1</Item>
      <Item>www.blah.com</Item>
      <Item>www.blah.net</Item>
      <Item>www.blah.org</Item>
    </Array>
  </Set>
</Configure>
<Configure class="org.eclipse.jetty.webapp.WebAppContext">
  <Set name="war"><SystemProperty name="jetty.home"/>/webapps/zzz.war</Set>
  <Set name="contextPath">/</Set>
  <Set name="virtualHosts">
    <Array type="java.lang.String">
      <Item>777.888.888.111</Item>
      <Item>www.other.com</Item>
      <Item>www.other.net</Item>
      <Item>www.other.org</Item>
    </Array>
  </Set>
</Configure>

Now, webapp xxx.war is available at:

  • http://333.444.555.666:8080/

  • http://127.0.0.1:8080/

  • http://www.blah.com:8080/

  • http://www.blah.net:8080/

  • http://www.blah.org:8080/

and webapp zzz.war is available at:

  • http://777.888.888.111:8080/

  • http://www.other.com:8080/

  • http://www.other.net:8080/

  • http://www.other.org:8080/

Configuring Virtual Hosts with Non-ascii Characters

International domain names are names containing non-ascii characters. For example "http://www.bücher.com". The DNS internally remains based on ascii, so these kinds of names are translated via an encoding called punycode into an ascii representation. Modern browsers detect these non-ascii characters in URLs and automatically apply the punycode encoding. For example, typing this URL into a browser:

http://www.åäö.com:8080/test/

translates to the following url:

http://www.xn--4cab6c.com:8080/test/

To use internationalized domain names with Jetty virtual hosts you need to supply the punycode form of the name in your context xml file (and of course you need to supply it to your DNS setup).

For example, if you are running a webapp on port 8080 at context /test, and you want to configure a virtual host for www.åäö.com, you configure its ascii equivalent in the context xml file for the context:

<Configure class="org.eclipse.jetty.webapp.WebAppContext">

  <Set name="contextPath">/</Set>
  <Set name="war"><SystemProperty name="jetty.home" default="."/>/webapps/test.war</Set>

  <Set name="virtualHosts">
    <Array type="String">
      <Item>www.xn--4cab6c.com</Item>
    </Array>
  </Set>
</Configure>      

After starting Jetty, you can enter the url http://www.åäö.com:8080/test/in a browser and reach the webapp.

If you don't have any webapps deployed at /, hitting the URL http://www.åäö.com:8080reaches Jetty's default handler, which serves back a 404 page listing the available contexts:

Error 404 - Not Found

No context on this server matched or handled this request.

Contexts known to this server are:

/test @ www.xn--4cab6c.com:8080 ---> WebAppContext@82d210@82d210/test,file:/tmp/Jetty_0_0_0_0_8080_test.war__test_www.xn..4cab6c.com_1jadjg/webapp/,/home/janb/src/jetty-eclipse/jetty/trunk/jetty-distribution/target/distribution/webapps/test.war

Notice that the link already has the punycode transformed domain name in it.

See an error or something missing? Contribute to this documentation at Github!