Propagating Set-Cookie header with Snowplow Collector Behind a CDN or Reverse Proxy

Cloudflare

✅ Option A: Cloudflare Workers

1. Create a Worker with a route (e.g. /sp) pointing to your collector.
2. Forward the client’s request to your Snowplow collector, including all headers.
3. Capture the collector response and copy all headers (including Set-Cookie).
4. Use response.headers.append('Set-Cookie', ...) to handle multiple cookies properly.

This ensures Set-Cookie isn’t removed or overwritten by Cloudflare caching.

⚙️ Option B: Page Rules + Cache Level

• Configure a Page Rule or Cache Rule to set Cache Everything or “Eligible for cache.”
• Ensure origin Cache-Control headers disable caching when cookies are involved.
• Cloudflare will forward Set-Cookie on non-cached or bypassed responses.

CloudFront

1. Forward Cookies in Cache Behavior
   Configure your distribution to “Forward all cookies” or explicitly whitelist tracking cookies like _sp_id and _sp_ses. This allows CloudFront to forward cookies and return Set-Cookie from the origin.
2. Control Caching of Responses with Cookies
   CloudFront doesn’t cache Set-Cookie responses unless configured. Add a header like:
   Cache‑Control: public, no‑cache="Set‑Cookie", max‑age=86400
   Alternatively, use Lambda@Edge to modify response headers dynamically.
3. Why forward cookies?
   Without forwarding, CloudFront strips cookies and blocks Set-Cookie, breaking client-side persistence.

Akamai

1. Enable “Set Response Cookie” in Property Manager
   Define which cookies to set (value, domain, path, expiry, HttpOnly, Secure, SameSite).
2. EdgeWorker Metadata
   Add to preserve Set-Cookie headers in onClientResponse.
3. Modify Outgoing Response Headers
   Ensure no rules strip Set-Cookie. Use the behavior to pass along, not remove, these headers.

Other Proxies

You can use other reverse proxies like Nginx, Envoy, HAProxy, Apache, or Traefik similarly:

Nginx

location /sp {
  proxy_pass         https://collector.example.com/com.snowplowanalytics.snowplow/tp2;
  proxy_set_header   Host collector.example.com;
  proxy_set_header   X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
  proxy_set_header   X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
}

This forwards all headers (including Set-Cookie) from the collector.

Envoy / HAProxy / Apache / Traefik

• Forward path and headers unchanged.
• Do not buffer or modify Set-Cookie.
• Allow multiple Set-Cookie headers in responses.