How can I ambidextrously handle different hosts when Django is running Gunicorn behind Apache?

Question

I have a Django installation that I would like to run multiple variations of the same site: same data, different static content, with an ultimate goal of demonstrating XYZ as implemented with various JavaScript frameworks. I would like to have different home pages load, and those pull their own distinct static content. (All intended projects are SPAs.)

I tried the solution at How can I get the domain name of my site within a Django template?, but on my system the incumbent site doesn't give a hostname of 'pragmatometer.com'; it gives a hostname of 'localhost:8000', because Django / Gunicorn is serving up pages as localhost. I tried specifying in /etc/hosts that pragmatometer.com is 127.0.0.1 and having Apache proxy to pragmatometer.com, but that resulted in an error. That leaves open the prospect of running separate hosts on different ports, which should be proxied as distinct, or making the homepage redirect to a URL-specific landing page, a solution which would sacrifice the clean URL of xyz.pragmatometer.com to demonstrate the XYZ framework implementation. I'm seeing multiple ways of duct taping it with JavaScript, only one or two of which I would want a future boss to see...

I would ideally like to have multiple (sub)domains' root URL's pulling a subdomain-specific homepage and the /load/*, /save/* etc. consistent across them. I would also like to have the root URL's pulling their own CSS and JavaScript, but that's easy enough if I can get the root URL working appropriately.

The best solution I am seeing so far is having separate server processes listening on the same IP, but having isomorphic servers running on different ports and proxied by different Apache VirtualHosts. Either that or having JavaScript detect the URL and overwrite the page with the "real" index for the domain, which has a bit of a smell.

Comments about a better solution or how to execute the above intent well?

--EDIT--

Or another approach which might be a little cleaner:

Have a home image that loads the contents of /framework/ for each framework, and then document.write()s it after the page is loaded enough for a document.write() to clobber existing page contents.

If I used jQuery to clobber and load a page in this fashion, would it leave behind any pollution that would interfere with frameworks working appropriately?

Answer 1

Your stack looks kinda crazy.

You want one webserver with Django which can be accessed by multiple domains. Each domain causes the Django application to serve different content. Did i understand you correctly?

If yes, maybe you are successful by replacing Apache by Nginx. It can resolve the requesting hostname and decide how to redirect the request:

What's the difference of $host and $http_host in Nginx

Multiple Domain Hosting With One Django Project

Update

Relevant nginx documentation for distinguishing between different hostnames: http://nginx.org/en/docs/http/request_processing.html http://nginx.org/en/docs/http/ngx_http_core_module.html#server_name

Relevant nginx documentation for adding request headers: http://nginx.org/en/docs/http/ngx_http_headers_module.html#add_header

Also see this answer: Adding and using header (HTTP) in nginx