Bug fixed: Proxy did not pass query string to target

Features Updates
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tl;dr: Whenever a site had a proxy redirect rule - a rule with status 200 pointing to a third-party host - the query string would not be passed in the request. We fixed that.

The Feature

In the docs: Rewrites and proxies | Netlify Docs

We allow rules in the _redirects file or netlify.toml to point to origins other than your site.
This is useful for redirecting to external sites.
If you specify a status code of 200 on the rule, our webserver will not redirect the request, but behave like a reverse-proxy to that host.

This is useful for:

  • Using APIs that cannot provide CORS
  • Integrating (and caching) external data sources
  • Improving load times by making the request go through our CDN
  • Advanced integration logic, like authenticating with JWT in the CDN layer

The Bug

For a long time the proxy was configured in a way that it would ignore any query string that was not explicitly stated in the url to proxy to.
This had effects on APIs that are using query arguments for pagination or specifying a query on data.

The Solution

The proxy logic will now always pass the query string from the client request unchanged to the proxies host.
The only exception: If your rule target already contains a query string, the proxy will only pass that along, nothing else.

Examples:

  • /api/* https://my.remote.api/:splat 200! will pass query string unchanged
  • /api/* https://my.remote.api/:splat?key=secret-key 200! will only ever pass key=secret-key

If you have been affected, I’d be glad to hear whether our solution works for you.

Note about the rollout:

  • This has only been applied to the regular (non-enterprise) CDN
  • We will apply this to the enterprise CDN once we verified the fix with non-enterprise customers
9 Likes
2

Update: This fix is deployed on the enterprise-level CDN as well. :tada:

1 Like
3

Is this feature available in the Free plan when redirecting to a third-party host?

4

@casca,

Absolutely; we have a whole section in our documentation which discusses proxying to another service from Netlify!

5
  • /api/* https://my.remote.api/:splat?key=secret-key 200! will only ever pass key=secret-key

this is not working with me at all …

6

Hey @Doaa-Ismael

Can you provide a demonstration of the proxy you are using including a sample URL?

7

@coelmay Thank you for the fast reply.

I have the following in netlify.toml

[[redirects]]
  from = "/:subdomain/*"
  status = 200
  force = true
  to = "https://myapp/:splat?subdomain=demo-sfv4"

I want to redirect from x.com/:subdomain to https://myapp/:splat?subdomain=:subdomain but it not working … even after I added a hardcoded subdomain.

how can I achieve this? and can I achieve this with netlify functions or not.

8

Do you want it to redirect or proxy @Doaa-Ismael?

A redirect (i.e. 301/302) will change the URL in the address bar of the browser, while a 200 will show the content from the to URL without changing the URL/path in the address bar.

9

@coelmay I want to proxy … actually redirect is working fine … but the proxy is not … I mean if I changed the status to 301 … but I don’t want to redirect I just want it as proxy.

10

Hey @Doaa-Ismael,

Which site is this regarding?

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Hey @hrishikesh sorry what do you mean? I added the snippet code above.

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I’m asking for the site name to investigate this further.