Apache ProxyPass error - apache

Question

I have to redirect all apache requests on 80 to tomcat on 8080, except one path.
So, if a receive http://example.com/anything --> tomcat:8080.
But, if the url is that: http://example.com/site --> apache should serve and no redirect is needed.
Currently, there is a folder named site inside /var/www/html/.
This is my current configuration file:
site.conf (this file contains only the following and is inside the conf.d folder)
<LocationMatch "/*">
Allow from all
ProxyPass /site !
ProxyPass http://127.0.0.1:8080
ProxyPassReverse http://127.0.0.1:8080
</LocationMatch>
I think this is a simple thing to accomplish with apache, but I have tried everything that I could find and I am still getting the error:
ProxyPass|ProxyPassMatch can not have a path when defined in a location.
The thing is that the root website is running on tomcat, but the other runs on apache (the one that I called site in this question).
If anyone can help, I appreciate.
Thanks!
Update 1 - 09/06/2017
I get it to work if I remove the LocationMatch and put the ProxyPass
direct in the .conf file:
ProxyPass /site !
ProxyPassReverse /site !
ProxyPass / http://127.0.0.1:8080
ProxyPassReverse / http://127.0.0.1:8080
But, I would like to know, why is that? What is the impact of putting this directives outside the LocationMatch tag? And, most important, why I cannot accomplish the same result using the LocationMatch?

Answer 1

I think the error is pretty clear:
ProxyPass|ProxyPassMatch can not have a path when defined in a location.
According to the documentation, inside a context block like Location or LocationBlock the ProxyPass directive does not accept a path:
When used inside a <Location> section, the first argument is omitted and the local directory is obtained from the <Location>. The same will occur inside a <LocationMatch> section; however, ProxyPass does not interpret the regexp as such, so it is necessary to use ProxyPassMatch in this situation instead.
You're getting the error because you were trying to use a path:
ProxyPass /site !
You could try to resolve this in theory by using multiple <Location> sections, like this:
<Location />
ProxyPass http://backend/
</Location>
<Location /site>
ProxyPass !
</Location>
The ordering of these sections is important.
Your solution of using ProxyPass directives outside of a LocationMatch block is probably the simplest solution.
As a side note, your LocationMatch directive is incorrect. The argument to LocationMatch is a regular expression, and /* would only match URLs consisting only of / characters. That is, it would match / or // or /////////, etc. I think you really meant /.*. The * in a regular expression means "the previous character, zero or more times".