Apache2 proxy reverse broken Tomcat8 links - apache

Question

In my DigitalOcean vps, I have Apache2 (LAMP), phpmyadmin and Tomcat 8. Everything is running well.
Now I'm trying to implement the reverse proxy so I can access the tomcat8 not by https://mydominiam.com:8080 but by https://mydominiam.com/tomcat. After reading some tutorials, I can get this code in my /etc/apache2/sites-available/mydomain.com-ssl.conf:
<VirtualHost *:443>
ServerAdmin mydomain#mydomain.com
ServerName mydomain.com
ServerAlias www.mydomain.com
DocumentRoot /var/www/mydomain.com/public_html
ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log
CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined
SSLEngine on
SSLCertificateFile /home/user/ssl/mydomain.com.crt
SSLCertificateKeyFile /home/user/ssl/mydomain.com.key
SSLCertificateChainFile /home/user/ssl/intermediate.crt
# AJP configuration
ProxyRequests Off
ProxyPreserveHost On
ProxyPass /tomcat ajp://mydomain.com:8009/
ProxyPassReverse /tomcat ajp://mydomain.com:8009/
ProxyPassReverseCookiePath / /
</VirtualHost>
The way the code above is when access https: //mydomain/tomcat, the tomcat home appears, but with broken links.
But if I change the code:
ProxyPass /tomcat ajp://mydomain.com:8009/
ProxyPassReverse /tomcat ajp://mydomain.com:8009/
for
ProxyPass / ajp://mydomain.com:8009/
ProxyPassReverse / ajp://mydomain.com:8009/
The tomcat home reloads usually no broken links, but only through the url https: //mydomain.com
I tried to follow this tutorial, but it still fails. Someone can tell me what I'm doing wrong?

Answer 1

Using ProxyPass with a Tomcat application where you are trying to rewrite the context path (in your configuration above, changing /tomcat to /), there are many many ways your application can break.
It is best to use a configuration like this:
ProxyPass /tomcat ajp://mydomain.com:8009/tomcat
ProxyPassReverse /tomcat ajp://mydomain.com:8009/tomcat
Now, deploy your application as /tomcat instead of the ROOT context. You can easily do that by re-naming the WAR file from ROOT.war to tomcat.war (or re-name the exploded WAR directory from ROOT to tomcat).
If you do the above, you don't have to play any games with rewriting links within pages, etc.