How to forward requests to another URL? - apache

Question

Currently, I have the following rule in my httpd.conf file to forward all requests from port 80 to port 8080 to be served by GlassFish app server:
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerAdmin admin#myserver.com
ServerName myserver.com
ProxyPreserveHost On
# setup the proxy
<Proxy *>
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
</Proxy>
ProxyPass / http://localhost:8080/
ProxyPassReverse / http://localhost:8080/
</VirtualHost>
Now, I need to add a rule such that all requests to http://myserver.com/ will be forwarded to http://myserver.com/page/index.html and the URL should still appear to be http://myserver.com/ on the client's browser. I tried to add the following rules inside the above VirtualHost:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule http://myserver.com/ http://myserver.com/page/index.html
or
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^/ http://myserver.com/page/index.html
or
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^/index.html http://myserver.com/page/index.html
However, when I go to http://myserver.com/, the browser have this error: This webpage has a redirect loop. The 3rd rule can only work if I go to http://myserver.com/index.html.
I am a total noob at writing rules for Apache. Hence, I'd be very grateful if you could show me what I've done wrong here :).
UPDATE:
The following rule works perfectly:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^/$ /page/index.html [R]

Answer 1

You need to add a $ indicating the end of the URI:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^/$ http://myserver.com/page/index.html
ProxyPass / http://localhost:8080/
ProxyPassReverse / http://localhost:8080/
Without the $, the regex ^/ matches /page/index.html which will cause it to redirect again, and it'll match again, and redirect again, etc.