Hosting a war file on cloudfoundry with custom domain? (or alternatives)

Question

Say, I have a Java web app inside a war file that is hosted on cloudfoundry at the url mycoolapp.cfapps.io, which works perfectly. I now need to host it on a custom domain mycoolapp.com and I have purchased the domain.

1. What is process to host it on my own domain? Can I do it via Cloudfoundry?
2. My app needs ssl. Currently https://mycoolapp.cfapps.io works. But I need it to work on my custom domain. What will be involved in this? (I think I need to get a certificate for my domain, but what next?)
3. In the app some confidential information is embedded in urls (this cannot be changed), so I'd also need to ensure that the provider cannot know the urls accessed (apart from the base url). Can this be done? If not, what are the alternatives?

Answer 1

1. It could be done by creating a CNAME record for your app (see Azure example here). Unfortunately, it seems that Cloud Foudry (CF) does not support it yet. As I understand, it is caused by the fact that CF router determines the exact Virtual Machine (and, hence, IP) by parsing URL and determining the route according to the host name (mycoolapp in your case). Ideally there would be an interface in CF where you could register all CNAME aliases for your app (as implemented for Azure websites)

2. If CNAME record would be enabled, that it would also work for HTTPS, as it basically resolves IP address. And definitely there would be an interface for you to upload a certificate for your domain. This leads to problems mentioned below about SSL termination. But, again, as far as I know, it is not supported by CF yet.

3. That it a question to the internal structure of run.pivotal.io deployment of CF. Conceptually HTTPS will do the trick as it encrypts URL parameters. However I suppose that SSL terminates on the router (as certificate is issued for *.cfapps.io - single cert for all apps - you could check it in browser connection to your app by HTTPS). That likely means that internally CF has access to ALL data of your request, and leads to my question about SSL termination in CF, which currently has no answer. Hope CF will provide a way to terminate SSL on the final server processing the request.

UPDATE:

Cloud Foundry has proposed its own way to support custom domains - through using CloudFlare proxy. If the fact of using proxy that decrypts your data is Ok for you, it could be used.