For our development servers, we have always used output buffering to replace the URLs (dealnews.com) with the URL for that development environment.  Where we run into problems is with CSS and JavaScript.  If those files contains URLs for images (CSS) or AJAX (JS) the URLS would not get replaced.  Our solution has been to parse those files as PHP (on the dev boxes only) and have some output buffering replace the URLs in those files.  That has caused various problems over the years and even some confusion for new developers.  So, I got to looking for a different solution.  Enter mod_substitute for Apache 2.2.
mod_substitute provides a mechanism to perform both regular expression and fixed string substitutions on response bodies. - Apache Documentation
Cool!  I put in the URL mappings and VIOLA!  All was right in the world.

Fast forward a day.  Another developer is testing some new code and finds that his XML is getting munged.  At first we blamed libxml because we had just been through an ordeal with a bad combination of a libxml compile option and PHP a while back.  Maybe we missed that box when we fixed it.  We recompiled everything on the dev box but there was no change.  So I started to think what was recently different with the dev boxes.  So, I turn off mod_substitute.  Dang, that fixed it.  I looked at my substitution strings and everything looked fine.  After cursing and being depressed that such a cool tool was not working, I took a break to let it settle in my mind.

I came back to the computer and decided to try a virgin Apache 2.2 build.  I downloaded the source from the web site instead of building from Gentoo's Portage.  Sure enough, a simple test worked fine.  No munging.  So, I loaded up the dev box Apache configuration into the newly compiled Apache.  Sure enough, munged XML.  ARGH!!

Up until this point, I had configured the substitutions globally and not in a particular virtual host.  So, I moved it all into one virtual host configuration.  Still broken.

A little more background on our config.  We use mod_proxy to emulate some features that we get in production with our F5 BIG-IP load balancers.  So, all requests to a dev box hit a mod_proxy virtual host and are then directed to the appropriate virtual host via a proxied request. 

So, I got the idea to hit the virtual host directly on its port and skip mod_proxy.  Dang, what do you know.  It worked fine.  So, something about the output of the backend request and mod_proxy was not playing nice.  So, hmm.  I got the idea to move the mod_substitute directives into the mod_proxy virtual hosts configuration.  Tested and working fine.  So, basically, this ensures that the substitution filtering is done only after the proxy and all other requests have been processed.  I am no Apache developer, so I have not dug any deeper.  I have a working solution and maybe this blog post will reach someone that can explain it.  As for mod_substitute, here is the way my config looks.

In the VirtualHost that is our global proxy, I have this:

FilterDeclare DN_REPLACE_URLS
FilterProvider DN_REPLACE_URLS SUBSTITUTE resp=Content-Type $text/
FilterProvider DN_REPLACE_URLS SUBSTITUTE resp=Content-Type $/xml
FilterProvider DN_REPLACE_URLS SUBSTITUTE resp=Content-Type $/json
FilterProvider DN_REPLACE_URLS SUBSTITUTE resp=Content-Type $/javascript
FilterChain DN_REPLACE_URLS

Elsewhere, in a file that is local to each dev host, I keep the actual mappings for that particular host:

Substitute "s|http://dealnews.com|http://somedevbox.dealnews.com|in"
Substitute "s|http://dealmac.com|http://somedevbox.dealmac.com|in"
# etc....

I am trying to think of other really cool uses for this.  Any ideas?