Apache reverse proxy wraps JSON response in HTML

3.4k Views Asked by Nathan Dabkowski At 06 April 2025 at 09:56

Apologies in advance if this question has been asked before (couldn't find anything quite like it), or is just painstakingly obvious and I'm just a moron for asking.

I'm using Apache 2.4 to reverse proxy a couple of internal pages and web apps. I've got quite a few of the proxy modules enabled, including mod_proxy_html to rewrite the HTML as needed. The each page or web app that is proxied is within blocks.

Generally this works well. Links work, resources load as they should blah, blah, blah. BUT a few of these web apps use AJAX for some nice UX features, most of these AJAX requests hit the proxied JSON endpoint.

My problem is this: any proxied JSON response is wrapped in

<html><body><p>{ "Example": "Yes" }</html></body></p>

I don't know where these HTML tags are coming from, and everything I have tried to get rid of them hasn't worked. I've tried LocationMatch blocks and explicitly setting ProxyHTMLEnable Off and removing substitute output filters that as well.

Is there a way to explicitly disable response body rewriting/substitutions for a particular URL?

Original Q&A

There are 3 best solutions below

valdisvi On 30 May 2017 at 20:59

By commenting out SetOutputFilter proxy-html you just disable rewriting of links, therefore proxy_html just does nothing.

nutria On 30 June 2016 at 10:52

I had the same problem. After two days of test i found a solution.

In the Location area you need to comment

#SetOutputFilter  proxy-html

I have just the following lines

< Location /blabla >
    #ProxyHTMLEnable off
    ProxyPassReverse /
    #SetOutputFilter  proxy-html
    ProxyHTMLURLMap  /externalBlaBla/  /blabla/
    ProxyPassReverseCookiePath / /blabla
< /Location >

niq On 25 September 2015 at 08:09

This seems to be the issue discussed at https://bahumbug.wordpress.com/2006/10/12/mod_proxy_html-revisited/ .

With modern versions of the software (since sometime before mod_proxy_html moved to apache.org in 2011), the recommended fix is the xml2StartParse directive.

Having said that, if ProxyHTMLEnable Off didn't fix it (after server restart), you also have other issues related to the scope of your configuration directives.

P.S. How come I can "sign up" here using Google of Facebook, but not with OpenID? How much are Google and Facebook paying you to blackmail me in their direction?

Apache reverse proxy wraps JSON response in HTML

There are 3 best solutions below

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