Can Varnish ESI script get the page that was on (origin page)?

Question

I have a PHP page that I cache with Varnish: http://categories.php?name=NAME. It has some ESI scripts like : < esi:include src="/esi.php" / >

All the pages have similar header, footer, sidebars so I remove the name=NAME when doing the VCL hash so all pages can get the same cache.

The problem is I would like inside the esi.php script to know what page issued the ESI request. Was it categories.php?name=A or categories.php?name=B ?

How can I do this? I didn't find this information anywhere.

I was thinking it might be inside the HTTP REFERER, but it isn't. :(

Would be better if you'll paste contents of your `vcl` file. — Vitalii Zurian, Aug 27 '12 at 06:49

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Sep 24 '13 at 08:01

2

Same problem, same status. To solve it I added the parent URL as a parameter to the ESI URL:

<esi:include src="/esi/content/?url=http://mysite.com/parent/page/" />

answered Sep 24 '13 at 08:01

Jens Bradler

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12
11

Johnny C · Answer 2 · 2013-08-05T19:24:01.850

1

Try this in vcl_recv:

if (req.esi_level == 0) {
    set req.http.X-Esi-Parent = req.url;
}

This will result in all esi requests related to this main request sending the original url in a request header called "X-Esi-Parent" which can be read on the back end.

Update

Aleksandr in the comments correctly points out that this won't work, since headers set in vcl_recv are not present on subsequent esi requests -- only headers from the client. A few people have asked similar questions on the listserv without being answered:

https://www.varnish-cache.org/lists/pipermail/varnish-misc/2012-February/021706.html

http://marc.info/?l=varnish-dev&m=135273366517518&w=2

So it seems there is no way to do this if you want to cache the response that includes the esi tags across all query string combinations.

edited Aug 05 '13 at 19:24

answered Jul 18 '13 at 01:07

Johnny C

1,799
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This doesn't work. Varnish will try new request for ESI. All request headers that are set during original request will be lost. – Aleksandar Janković Aug 02 '13 at 19:36
Hmm this did work for me, with two modifications: conditional should be `req.esi_level != 0`, and instead of `req.url` get the enclosing page's URL from `req_top.url`. – Andrew Mar 13 '22 at 23:21

score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Dec 11 '16 at 19:37

1

Starting from Varnish 4.1 you can do:

 if (0 < req.esi_level && req_top.url ~ "found/in/parent/url") {
     ...
 }

answered Dec 11 '16 at 19:37

Jeroen Vermeulen - MageHost

1,559
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22

Can Varnish ESI script get the page that was on (origin page)?

3 Answers3