Bypassing CloudFlare's time-out of 100 seconds

Question

I am attempting to AJAX-ify my reports in order to bypass the 100 seconds time-out that CloudFlare imposes on requests that run through its site.

See Is it possible to i

Answer 1

In case anyone else has the same problem, I am posting how I finally got this working. I gave up trying to use AJAX to run the report, but instead ran the report via a Thread, but used AJAX to "poll" to check if the report had been created. What I did was basically as follows.

Note that I stripped a lot out of my code, e.g. security routines and error checking routines, just to give the basic framework.

I created a java class called ThreadMyReport

public class ThreadMyReport implements Runnable {

    String fileID = "";
    Date dateOfReport = null;

    public ThreadMyReport(Date dateOfReport) {
        this.fileID= "MyReport_" + UUID.randomUUID();
        this.dateOfReport = dateOfReport;
    }

    public void run() {
        int a = ReportMyReport.loadAndSaveMyReport(dateOfReport, fileID);
    }


    public String getFileID() {
        return fileID;
    }
}

All my original code to generate the report is found in ReportMyReport.loadAndSaveMyReport. When the report is finished, then it saves a file with fileName fileID on the server.

I then started a thread going to run the report

    ThreadMyReport a  = new ThreadMyReport(theDate);
    Thread theThread=new Thread(a);
    theThread.start();
    fileID=a.getFileID();

I then added a javascript routine to check via AJAX every second whether the file had been created, and if it had been created then to display the report.

<SCRIPT language="javascript">


    var myVar;
    myVar=setInterval(function (){
    $.post("post/post_checkReportReady_xml.jsp", {
       generatedReport: '<%=fileID%>'
    }, function(data) {
       if (data.indexOf("produced")>-1) {
           clearInterval(myVar);
           //display report
       }
       if (data.indexOf("failed")>-1) {
           clearInterval(myVar);
       }
    });

}, 1000);
        </SCRIPT>

The AJAX code looks like this:

     <%
    String result="";

    String generatedReport=(request.getParameter("generatedReport"));

    if(!"".equals(generatedReport)) {
        String fileName2="My directory/"+generatedReport+".xlsm"; 
        java.io.File f = new java.io.File(fileName2);
        if(f.exists()) { 
            result="produced";
        }
    }
}

%>
<%=result%>

Answer 2

Since cloudflare does not cache html or xhr, you can greycloud a subdomain but on the server use that as an alias. For example...

In CloudFlare dns:

• www 123.123.123.123 = orange (protected)
• ajax 123.123.123.123 = grey (dns only)

In your website control panel add ajax.mydomain.com as an alias.

Finally, in your code use the fqdn that hits your server bypassing cloudflare.

function ajaxReport() {
    var seconds = prompt("Please enter how many seconds you want the report to run", "5");
    $('#imgWaiting').show();
    $.post("//ajax.mydomain.com/post/post_ajaxReport.jsp",
  {
    theParam:seconds
  },function(data) {
    $('#imgWaiting').hide();
    window.location=data;
 });
}

This does expose your IP address. But there should be little to no performance penalty, depending on the content returned.