arbitrary url forward? *urgent*

[Matt]

Hello --

I'd like to forward requests to

myappdomain.com/yada/yada

to

www.myappdomain.com/yada/yada


Is this possible? How do I do it?

I am using an eNom backed domain name hosted at google using Google
Apps.

Thank you-
Matt

[Ikai L (Google)]

We don't support naked domains, per the FAQ:

http://code.google.com/appengine/kb/general.html#naked_domain

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[Matthew]

OK. So how do I redirect from

myappdomain.com/yada/yada
to
www.myappdomain.com/yada/yada

???

Matt

On Dec 7, 10:55 am, "Ikai L (Google)" <ika...@google.com> wrote:
> We don't support naked domains, per the FAQ:
>
> http://code.google.com/appengine/kb/general.html#naked_domain
>
>
>
>
>
> On Mon, Dec 7, 2009 at 9:17 AM, Matt <mattspe...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hello --
>
> >  I'd like to forward requests to
>
> >   myappdomain.com/yada/yada
>
> >  to
>
> >  www.myappdomain.com/yada/yada
>
> > Is this possible?  How do I do it?
>
> >  I am using an eNom backed domain name hosted at google using Google
> > Apps.
>
> > Thank you-
> > Matt
>
> > --
>
> > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
> > "Google App Engine" group.
> > To post to this group, send email to google-a...@googlegroups.com.
> > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to

> > google-appengi...@googlegroups.com<google-appengine%2Bunsubscrib e...@googlegroups.com>
> > .

[Matthew]

Your docs & system of pointing to someone that is not even part of
Google for a solution to this is incredibly lame, IMO.

This is not sexy stuff, nor is it fun to work on -- but we need this
to work.

Anyone care to write up a solution, so people can safely stop asking
this question?

Thanks-

Matt

On Dec 7, 10:55 am, "Ikai L (Google)" <ika...@google.com> wrote:

> We don't support naked domains, per the FAQ:
>
> http://code.google.com/appengine/kb/general.html#naked_domain
>
>
>
>
>
> On Mon, Dec 7, 2009 at 9:17 AM, Matt <mattspe...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hello --
>
> >  I'd like to forward requests to
>
> >   myappdomain.com/yada/yada
>
> >  to
>
> >  www.myappdomain.com/yada/yada
>
> > Is this possible?  How do I do it?
>
> >  I am using an eNom backed domain name hosted at google using Google
> > Apps.
>
> > Thank you-
> > Matt
>
> > --
>
> > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
> > "Google App Engine" group.
> > To post to this group, send email to google-a...@googlegroups.com.
> > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to

> > google-appengi...@googlegroups.com<google-appengine%2Bunsubscrib e...@googlegroups.com>
> > .

[Matthew]

I'm talking about this, btw:

the faq page says to consult this guy..

http://knol.google.com/k/larry-h/google-apps-discussion-group/2ywrfjibsoohc/1#view

matt

On Dec 7, 10:55 am, "Ikai L (Google)" <ika...@google.com> wrote:

> We don't support naked domains, per the FAQ:
>
> http://code.google.com/appengine/kb/general.html#naked_domain
>
>
>
>
>
> On Mon, Dec 7, 2009 at 9:17 AM, Matt <mattspe...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hello --
>
> >  I'd like to forward requests to
>
> >   myappdomain.com/yada/yada
>
> >  to
>
> >  www.myappdomain.com/yada/yada
>
> > Is this possible?  How do I do it?
>
> >  I am using an eNom backed domain name hosted at google using Google
> > Apps.
>
> > Thank you-
> > Matt
>
> > --
>
> > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
> > "Google App Engine" group.
> > To post to this group, send email to google-a...@googlegroups.com.
> > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to

> > google-appengi...@googlegroups.com<google-appengine%2Bunsubscrib e...@googlegroups.com>
> > .

[Eric Rannaud]

On Mon, Dec 7, 2009 at 11:57 AM, Matt P <mpe...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Your docs & system of pointing to someone that is not even part of
> Google for a solution to this is incredibly lame, IMO.
>
> This is not sexy stuff, nor is it fun to work on -- but we need this
> to work.
>
> Anyone care to write up a solution, so people can safely stop asking
> this question?

What he is explaining, is that you cannot map your app at
nakeddomain.com. Therefore, any redirection has to be implemented
outside of appengine and outside of Google's control, usually at the
DNS provider level. It is not easy to tell you exactly how, as it
depends on your DNS provider and/or other services you have access to.

Essentially, you need to configure your DNS to point nakeddomain.com
to the IP address of a HTTP server on which you can configure
http://nakeddomain.com/ to redirect (301 or 302) to
http://www.nakeddomain.com/.

Certain DNS providers offer such a redirection as an integrated,
built-in service, others force you to configure it explicitly (meaning
you need to own/rent such a server or use a redirection service do it
for you).

The Knol page you're talking about actually seems to explain how to do
it for eNom.


P.S. Pointing to Knol is the Google equivalent of pointing to Wikipedia, really.

[Matthew]

Thank you for the more detailed answer.

I still consider this Google's responsibility however. I bought the
domain using google tools. They chose eNom as the provider & so
should have detailed instructions on how to do this with eNom.

the Knoll page I sent actually says to remove all the A records from
the eNom config page. Is that right?

Matt

On Dec 7, 12:13 pm, Eric Rannaud <eric.rann...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Dec 7, 2009 at 11:57 AM, Matt P <mpe...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Your docs & system of pointing to someone that is not even part of
> > Google for a solution to this is incredibly lame, IMO.
>
> > This is not sexy stuff, nor is it fun to work on -- but we need this
> > to work.
>
> > Anyone care to write up a solution, so people can safely stop asking
> > this question?
>
> What he is explaining, is that you cannot map your app at
> nakeddomain.com. Therefore, any redirection has to be implemented
> outside of appengine and outside of Google's control, usually at the
> DNS provider level. It is not easy to tell you exactly how, as it
> depends on your DNS provider and/or other services you have access to.
>
> Essentially, you need to configure your DNS to point nakeddomain.com

> to the IP address of a HTTP server on which you can configurehttp://nakeddomain.com/to redirect (301 or 302) tohttp://www.nakeddomain.com/.

[Eli Jones]

How is it Google's responsibility to tell you how to manage your domain?

The faq that Ikai linked to pointed out very clearly:

 "If your domain registrar supports URL redirects, you can redirect from http://yourdomain.com to e.g http://www.yourdomain.com or http://appid.yourdomain.com."

That's as plain as day.. it is not Google's fault, or my fault that you don't know how to figure out how to configure this.

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[Ikai L (Google)]

Matt,

We're tracking this issue. I see that you've already added to the issue tracker: http://code.google.com/p/googleappengine/issues/detail?id=777

Hopefully you've starred it. This is one of the mechanisms when we prioritize features.

[Eric Rannaud]

On Mon, Dec 7, 2009 at 12:51 PM, Matt P <mpe...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Thank you for the more detailed answer.
>
> I still consider this Google's responsibility however.   I bought the
> domain using google tools.  They chose eNom as the provider & so
> should have detailed instructions on how to do this with eNom.
>
> the Knoll page I sent actually says to remove all the A records from
> the eNom config page.   Is that right?

Hmm, I see it says that in the confusing section "Special instructions
for..." which seems kinda bogus. This section seems to only apply to
Godaddy customer (64.202.189.170 reverse-lookup to a Godaddy server at
secureserver.net).

This part appears to make sense:

"If eNom is your service provider:
- Add a Host Record with @ as the Host Name, the url of the home page
of your Site as the Address, and URL Frame as the Record Type
- Change or add a CNAME of www so it points to the symbol @
- Save the changes and WAIT for up to 48 hours for the changes to
propagate to all necessary world-wide servers."

Or look at eNom's doc.

[Matthew]

> This part appears to make sense:
>
> "If eNom is your service provider:
> - Add a Host Record with @ as the Host Name, the url of the home page
> of your Site as the Address, and URL Frame as the Record Type
> - Change or add a CNAME of www so it points to the symbol @
> - Save the changes and WAIT for up to 48 hours for the changes to
> propagate to all necessary world-wide servers."
>
> Or look at eNom's doc.

eNom's doc doesn't really cut it -- what is confusing is how google
figures out what pages to display.. a lot of it seems to be automatic,
looking at the actual request.. but that wasn't obvious when I sat
down to take care of this.

Regarding eNom's URL frame.. that solution isn't great. It doesn't
get along with App Engine's cookie mechanism for sessions. When I
reload a page, session data is gone. (using appengine_utilities for
sessions)

For now I'm just redirecting to my app engine URL. Not pretty but it
works. I ended up using the exact paragraph you quote (just using
the URL Redirect instead of URL Frame)

Seriously Google. Come up with a solution to this & put the docs
online. You sent me to eNom -- you should take care of documenting
their system in regards to this need -- a need that LOTS of people
will want.

Matt

[Greg]

On Dec 8, 10:52 am, Matt P <mpe...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Regarding eNom's URL frame.. that solution isn't great.  It doesn't
> get along with App Engine's cookie mechanism for sessions.  When I
> reload a page, session data is gone.  (using appengine_utilities for
> sessions)

I don't use Enom, but do the equivalent (a permanent redirect) from my
naked domain to my www.mydomain.com and sessions work just fine. So
keep working at it - it's definately do-able.

[Nick Johnson (Google)]

Hi Matt,

The Knol you're referring to is linked under a section "URL Forwarding for Google Sites" - this applies to Google Sites, not to App Engine. The instructions that are relevant to App Engine are in the section above this, where it says:

If you'd like to allow users to enter example.com and arrive at your web pages at www.example.com, we recommend creating a Javascript redirect, or a 301/302 redirect to point your users to the intended destination. Since instructions vary by domain host, we recommend contacting your hosting service for further instructions.

As the text says, because the details of setting up a redirect for your naked domain varies from provider to provider, it's not possible for us to exhaustively document this.

To answer your more general question, routing to App Engine apps depends on the mappings you have configured in Google Apps. When our infrastructure receives a request for a domain name, it checks to see if a mapping exists in Apps, and if it does, redirects it to App Engine (or another service, as appropriate). In the absence of a mapping, it serves up a generic 404 page. In order for traffic to reach our infrastructure, the domain in question has to have a CNAME record to ghs.google.com, which is not possible for naked domains; hence the requirement of a workaround via an external service that sends 301 or 302 response.

-Nick Johnson

Matt

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[Eric Rannaud]

On Mon, Dec 7, 2009 at 1:52 PM, Matt P <mpe...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Regarding eNom's URL frame.. that solution isn't great.  It doesn't
> get along with App Engine's cookie mechanism for sessions.  When I
> reload a page, session data is gone.  (using appengine_utilities for
> sessions)

If by "enom's URL frame" you mean the mechanism by which the url
remains "http://nakeddomain.com" in the address bar once you are
redirected to http://www.nakeddomain.com/index.html, then it's
possible this breaks certain things in your site.

Keeping "http://nakeddomain.com" in the address bar means the service
hosted at http://nakeddomain.com has to use an HTML frame that embeds
http://www.nakeddomain.com (which is why the address remains
constant). What you should use is an HTTP redirection (301 or 302).
Such a redirection will most certainly not break your site (as long as
you consider your website to be http://www.nakeddomain.com).