node-http-proxy

node-http-proxy is an HTTP programmable proxying library that supports websockets. It is suitable for implementing components such as reverse proxies and load balancers.

Table of Contents

• Installation
• Upgrading from 0.8.x ?
• Core Concept
• Use Cases
  • Setup a basic stand-alone proxy server
  • Setup a stand-alone proxy server with custom server logic
  • Setup a stand-alone proxy server with proxy request header re-writing
  • Modify a response from a proxied server
  • Setup a stand-alone proxy server with latency
  • Using HTTPS
  • Proxying WebSockets
• Options
• Listening for proxy events
• Shutdown
• Miscellaneous
  • Test
  • ProxyTable API
  • Logo
• Contributing and Issues
• License

Installation

npm install http-proxy --save

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Upgrading from 0.8.x ?

Click here

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Core Concept

A new proxy is created by calling createProxyServer and passing an options object as argument (valid properties are available here)

var httpProxy = require('http-proxy');

var proxy = httpProxy.createProxyServer(options); // See (†)

†Unless listen(..) is invoked on the object, this does not create a webserver. See below.

An object will be returned with four methods:

• web req, res, [options] (used for proxying regular HTTP(S) requests)
• ws req, socket, head, [options] (used for proxying WS(S) requests)
• listen port (a function that wraps the object in a webserver, for your convenience)
• close [callback] (a function that closes the inner webserver and stops listening on given port)

It is then possible to proxy requests by calling these functions

http.createServer(function(req, res) {
  proxy.web(req, res, { target: 'http://mytarget.com:8080' });
});

Errors can be listened on either using the Event Emitter API

proxy.on('error', function(e) {
  ...
});

or using the callback API

proxy.web(req, res, { target: 'http://mytarget.com:8080' }, function(e) { ... });

When a request is proxied it follows two different pipelines (available here) which apply transformations to both the req and res object. The first pipeline (incoming) is responsible for the creation and manipulation of the stream that connects your client to the target. The second pipeline (outgoing) is responsible for the creation and manipulation of the stream that, from your target, returns data to the client.

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Use Cases

Setup a basic stand-alone proxy server

var http = require('http'),
    httpProxy = require('http-proxy');
//
// Create your proxy server and set the target in the options.
//
httpProxy.createProxyServer({target:'http://localhost:9000'}).listen(8000); // See (†)

//
// Create your target server
//
http.createServer(function (req, res) {
  res.writeHead(200, { 'Content-Type': 'text/plain' });
  res.write('request successfully proxied!' + '\n' + JSON.stringify(req.headers, true, 2));
  res.end();
}).listen(9000);

†Invoking listen(..) triggers the creation of a web server. Otherwise, just the proxy instance is created.

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Setup a stand-alone proxy server with custom server logic

This example shows how you can proxy a request using your own HTTP server and also you can put your own logic to handle the request.

var http = require('http'),
    httpProxy = require('http-proxy');

//
// Create a proxy server with custom application logic
//
var proxy = httpProxy.createProxyServer({});

//
// Create your custom server and just call `proxy.web()` to proxy
// a web request to the target passed in the options
// also you can use `proxy.ws()` to proxy a websockets request
//
var server = http.createServer(function(req, res) {
  // You can define here your custom logic to handle the request
  // and then proxy the request.
  proxy.web(req, res, { target: 'http://127.0.0.1:5050' });
});

console.log("listening on port 5050")
server.listen(5050);

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Setup a stand-alone proxy server with proxy request header re-writing

This example shows how you can proxy a request using your own HTTP server that modifies the outgoing proxy request by adding a special header.

var http = require('http'),
    httpProxy = require('http-proxy');

//
// Create a proxy server with custom application logic
//
var proxy = httpProxy.createProxyServer({});

// To modify the proxy connection before data is sent, you can listen
// for the 'proxyReq' event. When the event is fired, you will receive
// the following arguments:
// (http.ClientRequest proxyReq, http.IncomingMessage req,
//  http.ServerResponse res, Object options). This mechanism is useful when
// you need to modify the proxy request before the proxy connection
// is made to the target.
//
proxy.on('proxyReq', function(proxyReq, req, res, options) {
  proxyReq.setHeader('X-Special-Proxy-Header', 'foobar');
});

var server = http.createServer(function(req, res) {
  // You can define here your custom logic to handle the request
  // and then proxy the request.
  proxy.web(req, res, {
    target: 'http://127.0.0.1:5050'
  });
});

console.log("listening on port 5050")
server.listen(5050);

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Modify a response from a proxied server

Sometimes when you have received a HTML/XML document from the server of origin you would like to modify it before forwarding it on.

Harmon allows you to do this in a streaming style so as to keep the pressure on the proxy to a minimum.

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Setup a stand-alone proxy server with latency

var http = require('http'),
    httpProxy = require('http-proxy');

//
// Create a proxy server with latency
//
var proxy = httpProxy.createProxyServer();

//
// Create your server that makes an operation that waits a while
// and then proxies the request
//
http.createServer(function (req, res) {
  // This simulates an operation that takes 500ms to execute
  setTimeout(function () {
    proxy.web(req, res, {
      target: 'http://localhost:9008'
    });
  }, 500);
}).listen(8008);

//
// Create your target server
//
http.createServer(function (req, res) {
  res.writeHead(200, { 'Content-Type': 'text/plain' });
  res.write('request successfully proxied to: ' + req.url + '\n' + JSON.stringify(req.headers, true, 2));
  res.end();
}).listen(9008);

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Using HTTPS

You can activate the validation of a secure SSL certificate to the target connection (avoid self-signed certs), just set secure: true in the options.

HTTPS -> HTTP

//
// Create the HTTPS proxy server in front of a HTTP server
//
httpProxy.createServer({
  target: {
    host: 'localhost',
    port: 9009
  },
  ssl: {
    key: fs.readFileSync('valid-ssl-key.pem', 'utf8'),
    cert: fs.readFileSync('valid-ssl-cert.pem', 'utf8')
  }
}).listen(8009);

HTTPS -> HTTPS

//
// Create the proxy server listening on port 443
//
httpProxy.createServer({
  ssl: {
    key: fs.readFileSync('valid-ssl-key.pem', 'utf8'),
    cert: fs.readFileSync('valid-ssl-cert.pem', 'utf8')
  },
  target: 'https://localhost:9010',
  secure: true // Depends on your needs, could be false.
}).listen(443);

HTTP -> HTTPS (using a PKCS12 client certificate)

//
// Create an HTTP proxy server with an HTTPS target
//
httpProxy.createProxyServer({
  target: {
    protocol: 'https:',
    host: 'my-domain-name',
    port: 443,
    pfx: fs.readFileSync('path/to/certificate.p12'),
    passphrase: 'password',
  },
  changeOrigin: true,
}).listen(8000);

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Proxying WebSockets

You can activate the websocket support for the proxy using ws:true in the options.

//
// Create a proxy server for websockets
//
httpProxy.createServer({
  target: 'ws://localhost:9014',
  ws: true
}).listen(8014);

Also you can proxy the websocket requests just calling the ws(req, socket, head) method.

//
// Setup our server to proxy standard HTTP requests
//
var proxy = new httpProxy.createProxyServer({
  target: {
    host: 'localhost',
    port: 9015
  }
});
var proxyServer = http.createServer(function (req, res) {
  proxy.web(req, res);
});

//
// Listen to the `upgrade` event and proxy the
// WebSocket requests as well.
//
proxyServer.on('upgrade', function (req, socket, head) {
  proxy.ws(req, socket, head);
});

proxyServer.listen(8015);

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Options

httpProxy.createProxyServer supports the following options:

• target: url string to be parsed with the url module
• forward: url string to be parsed with the url module
• agent: object to be passed to http(s).request (see Node's https agent and http agent objects)
• ssl: object to be passed to https.createServer()
• ws: true/false, if you want to proxy websockets
• xfwd: true/false, adds x-forward headers
• secure: true/false, if you want to verify the SSL Certs
• toProxy: true/false, passes the absolute URL as the path (useful for proxying to proxies)
• prependPath: true/false, Default: true - specify whether you want to prepend the target's path to the proxy path
• ignorePath: true/false, Default: false - specify whether you want to ignore the proxy path of the incoming request (note: you will have to append / manually if required).
• localAddress: Local interface string to bind for outgoing connections
• changeOrigin: true/false, Default: false - changes the origin of the host header to the target URL
• preserveHeaderKeyCase: true/false, Default: false - specify whether you want to keep letter case of response header key
• auth: Basic authentication i.e. 'user:password' to compute an Authorization header.
• hostRewrite: rewrites the location hostname on (201/301/302/307/308) redirects.
• autoRewrite: rewrites the location host/port on (201/301/302/307/308) redirects based on requested host/port. Default: false.
• protocolRewrite: rewrites the location protocol on (201/301/302/307/308) redirects to 'http' or 'https'. Default: null.
• cookieDomainRewrite: rewrites domain of set-cookie headers. Possible values:
• false (default): disable cookie rewriting
• String: new domain, for example cookieDomainRewrite: "new.domain". To remove the domain, use cookieDomainRewrite: "".
• Object: mapping of domains to new domains, use "*" to match all domains. For example keep one domain unchanged, rewrite one domain and remove other domains: cookieDomainRewrite: { "unchanged.domain": "unchanged.domain", "old.domain": "new.domain", "*": "" }
• cookiePathRewrite: rewrites path of set-cookie headers. Possible values:
• false (default): disable cookie rewriting
• String: new path, for example cookiePathRewrite: "/newPath/". To remove the path, use cookiePathRewrite: "". To set path to root use cookiePathRewrite: "/".
• Object: mapping of paths to new paths, use "*" to match all paths. For example, to keep one path unchanged, rewrite one path and remove other paths: cookiePathRewrite: { "/unchanged.path/": "/unchanged.path/", "/old.path/": "/new.path/", "*": "" }
• headers: object with extra headers to be added to target requests.
• proxyTimeout: timeout (in millis) for outgoing proxy requests
• timeout: timeout (in millis) for incoming requests
• followRedirects: true/false, Default: false - specify whether you want to follow redirects
• selfHandleResponse true/false, if set to true, none of the webOutgoing passes are called and it's your responsibility to appropriately return the response by listening and acting on the proxyRes event

• buffer: stream of data to send as the request body. Maybe you have some middleware that consumes the request stream before proxying it on e.g. If you read the body of a request into a field called 'req.rawbody' you could restream this field in the buffer option:

  ``` 'use strict';

  const streamify = require('stream-array'); const HttpProxy = require('http-proxy'); const proxy = new HttpProxy();

  module.exports = (req, res, next) => {

  proxy.web(req, res, { target: 'http://localhost:4003/', buffer: streamify(req.rawBody) }, next);

  }; ```

NOTE: options.ws and options.ssl are optional. options.target and options.forward cannot both be missing

If you are using the proxyServer.listen method, the following options are also ap