Reverse proxy needed

HTTP reverse proxies are a Useful Thing. Sometimes it's for exposing an endpoint from behind a firewall that you don't control, sometimes it's for moving a service from one public URL to another while not leaving legacy consumers in the dark. Both Apache and IIS support them almost out of the box, but how often do you have control over server-level settings with a cheap-o hosting plan? For discussion's sake, let's assume you don't; otherwise, there'd be no discussion.

Enter PHP, libcurl and the untameable spirit of Doing Things on the Cheap (a recurring theme here). A half-assed PHP reverse proxy seems easy to write. Collect target URL and POST data (if any), fire a CURL request to the intended target, pass the response along. And indeed, a web search quickly reveals a few quick and dirty implementations. Here's one. Here's another. The need is out there, a quick and dirty implementation is entirely possible, so here they go.

And yet it seems like I'm about to put together yet another one. Here are my requirements that those Q&D proxies don't meet:

• POST data in arbitrary format (not just forms)
• PHP session support (general purpose cookies not necessary)
• Methods other than GET/POST

Still quite doable. Session support, however, might require some special care. Session cookie on the proxy machine might get in the way of the target session cookie. Stay tuned.

Update: I went ahead and wrote one.