Updating X-Clacks-Overhead: GNU Terry Pratchett

By jjm

Updating my previous post X-Clacks-Overhead: GNU Terry Pratchett from 2020 about adding a custom header so that:

“A man is not dead while his name is still spoken.” - Going Postal, Chapter 4 prologue

It’s been possible to set this HTTP Header via a Response headers policy for sometime now, so instead of needing to use a Lambda@Edge function. Which has the added bonus of being free!

This is way simpler than the previous method, now you just need to add the following aws_cloudfront_response_headers_policy resource:

resource "aws_cloudfront_response_headers_policy" "this" {
  name    = "x-clacks-overhead"
  comment = "https://xclacksoverhead.org/home/about"

  custom_headers_config {
    items {
      header   = "X-Clacks-Overhead"
      override = true
      value    = "GNU Terry Pratchett"
    }
  }
}

and then reference it as follows:

resource "aws_cloudfront_distribution" "this" {

  default_cache_behavior {
    # Loads of stuff removed! 
  
    response_headers_policy_id = aws_cloudfront_response_headers_policy.this.id
  }

  # Loads of stuff deleted ....
}

It’s then really simple to test.

$ curl -I https://www.geeky-and-blonde.me.uk/
x-clacks-overhead: GNU Terry Pratchett

You can also use the same resource to add Security and CORS headers too.