Explaining web requests, cors, and diagram of flow
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@ -15,3 +15,56 @@ setup, check out our [user account control recpie](./user-account-control.md)
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that builds on the lessons learned here.
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## Overview
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Our two biggest hurdles when hosting our image archive and web client are:
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- Risks related to exposing our PACS to the netowrk
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- Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS) requests
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### Handling Web Requests
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We mittigate our first issue by allowing [Nginx][nginx] to handle incoming web
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requests. Nginx is open source software for web serving, reverse proxying,
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caching, and more. It's designed for maximum performance and stability --
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allowing us to more reliably serve content than Orthanc's built-in server can.
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More specifically, we accomplish this by using a
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[`reverse proxy`](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_proxy) to retrieve
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resources from our image archive (Orthanc), and when accessing its web admin.
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> A reverse proxy is a type of proxy server that retrieves resources on behalf
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> of a client from one or more servers. These resources are then returned to the
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> client, appearing as if they originated from the proxy server itself.
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### CORS Issues
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Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS) is a mechanism that uses HTTP headers to
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tell a browser which web applications have permission to access selected
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resources from a server at a different origin (domain, protocol, port). IE. By
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default, a Web App located at `http://my-website.com` can't access resources
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hosted at `http://not-my-website.com`
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We can solve this one of two ways:
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1. Have our Image Archive located at the same domain as our Web App
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2. Add appropriate `Access-Control-Allow-*` HTTP headers
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This solution uses the first approach, but you can see an example of the second
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in the `docker-compose` bundled with this project for local development:
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[HERE](#)
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You can read more about CORS in this Medium article: [Understanding
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CORS][understanding-cors]
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### Diagram
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This setup allows us to create a setup similar to the one pictured below:
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{% include "./../_nginx-image-archive-diagram.md" %}
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- All web requests are routed through `nginx` on our `OpenResty` image
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- `/pacs` is a reverse proxy for `orthanc`'s `DICOM Web` endpoints
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- `/pacs-admin` is a reverse proxy for `orthanc`'s Web Admin
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- All static resources for OHIF Viewer are served up by `nginx` when a matching
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route for that resource is requested
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