[javascript] How to create a simple http proxy in node.js?

I'm trying to create a proxy server to pass HTTP GET requests from a client to a third party website (say google). My proxy just needs to mirror incoming requests to their corresponding path on the target site, so if my client's requested url is:

127.0.0.1/images/srpr/logo11w.png

The following resource should be served:

http://www.google.com/images/srpr/logo11w.png

Here is what I came up with:

http.createServer(onRequest).listen(80);

function onRequest (client_req, client_res) {
    client_req.addListener("end", function() {
        var options = {
            hostname: 'www.google.com',
            port: 80,
            path: client_req.url,
            method: client_req.method
            headers: client_req.headers
        };
        var req=http.request(options, function(res) {
            var body;
            res.on('data', function (chunk) {
                body += chunk;
            });
            res.on('end', function () {
                 client_res.writeHead(res.statusCode, res.headers);
                 client_res.end(body);
            });
        });
        req.end();
    });
}

It works well with html pages, but for other types of files, it just returns a blank page or some error message from target site (which varies in different sites).

Here's an implementation using node-http-proxy from nodejitsu.

var http = require('http');
var httpProxy = require('http-proxy');
var proxy = httpProxy.createProxyServer({});

http.createServer(function(req, res) {
    proxy.web(req, res, { target: 'http://www.google.com' });
}).listen(3000);

Your code doesn't work for binary files because they can't be cast to strings in the data event handler. If you need to manipulate binary files you'll need to use a buffer. Sorry, I do not have an example of using a buffer because in my case I needed to manipulate HTML files. I just check the content type and then for text/html files update them as needed:

app.get('/*', function(clientRequest, clientResponse) {
  var options = { 
    hostname: 'google.com',
    port: 80, 
    path: clientRequest.url,
    method: 'GET'
  };  

  var googleRequest = http.request(options, function(googleResponse) { 
    var body = ''; 

    if (String(googleResponse.headers['content-type']).indexOf('text/html') !== -1) {
      googleResponse.on('data', function(chunk) {
        body += chunk;
      }); 

      googleResponse.on('end', function() {
        // Make changes to HTML files when they're done being read.
        body = body.replace(/google.com/gi, host + ':' + port);
        body = body.replace(
          /<\/body>/, 
          '<script src="http://localhost:3000/new-script.js" type="text/javascript"></script></body>'
        );

        clientResponse.writeHead(googleResponse.statusCode, googleResponse.headers);
        clientResponse.end(body);
      }); 
    }   
    else {
      googleResponse.pipe(clientResponse, {
        end: true
      }); 
    }   
  }); 

  googleRequest.end();
});    

Here's a more optimized version of Mike's answer above that gets the websites Content-Type properly, supports POST and GET request, and uses your browsers User-Agent so websites can identify your proxy as a browser. You can just simply set the URL by changing url = and it will automatically set HTTP and HTTPS stuff without manually doing it.

var express = require('express')
var app = express()
var https = require('https');
var http = require('http');
const { response } = require('express');


app.use('/', function(clientRequest, clientResponse) {
    var url;
    url = 'https://www.google.com'
    var parsedHost = url.split('/').splice(2).splice(0, 1).join('/')
    var parsedPort;
    var parsedSSL;
    if (url.startsWith('https://')) {
        parsedPort = 443
        parsedSSL = https
    } else if (url.startsWith('http://')) {
        parsedPort = 80
        parsedSSL = http
    }
    var options = { 
      hostname: parsedHost,
      port: parsedPort,
      path: clientRequest.url,
      method: clientRequest.method,
      headers: {
        'User-Agent': clientRequest.headers['user-agent']
      }
    };  
  
    var serverRequest = parsedSSL.request(options, function(serverResponse) { 
      var body = '';   
      if (String(serverResponse.headers['content-type']).indexOf('text/html') !== -1) {
        serverResponse.on('data', function(chunk) {
          body += chunk;
        }); 
  
        serverResponse.on('end', function() {
          // Make changes to HTML files when they're done being read.
          body = body.replace(`example`, `Cat!` );
  
          clientResponse.writeHead(serverResponse.statusCode, serverResponse.headers);
          clientResponse.end(body);
        }); 
      }   
      else {
        serverResponse.pipe(clientResponse, {
          end: true
        }); 
        clientResponse.contentType(serverResponse.headers['content-type'])
      }   
    }); 
  
    serverRequest.end();
  });    


  app.listen(3000)
  console.log('Running on 0.0.0.0:3000')

Here's a proxy server using request that handles redirects. Use it by hitting your proxy URL http://domain.com:3000/?url=[your_url]

var http = require('http');
var url = require('url');
var request = require('request');

http.createServer(onRequest).listen(3000);

function onRequest(req, res) {

    var queryData = url.parse(req.url, true).query;
    if (queryData.url) {
        request({
            url: queryData.url
        }).on('error', function(e) {
            res.end(e);
        }).pipe(res);
    }
    else {
        res.end("no url found");
    }
}

I juste wrote a proxy in nodejs that take care of HTTPS with optional decoding of the message. This proxy also can add proxy-authentification header in order to go through a corporate proxy. You need to give as argument the url to find the proxy.pac file in order to configurate the usage of corporate proxy.

https://github.com/luckyrantanplan/proxy-to-proxy-https

Super simple and readable, here's how you create a local proxy server to a local HTTP server with just Node.js (tested on v8.1.0). I've found it particular useful for integration testing so here's my share:

/**
 * Once this is running open your browser and hit http://localhost
 * You'll see that the request hits the proxy and you get the HTML back
 */

'use strict';

const net = require('net');
const http = require('http');

const PROXY_PORT = 80;
const HTTP_SERVER_PORT = 8080;

let proxy = net.createServer(socket => {
    socket.on('data', message => {
        console.log('---PROXY- got message', message.toString());

        let serviceSocket = new net.Socket();

        serviceSocket.connect(HTTP_SERVER_PORT, 'localhost', () => {
            console.log('---PROXY- Sending message to server');
            serviceSocket.write(message);
        });

        serviceSocket.on('data', data => {
            console.log('---PROXY- Receiving message from server', data.toString();
            socket.write(data);
        });
    });
});

let httpServer = http.createServer((req, res) => {
    switch (req.url) {
        case '/':
            res.writeHead(200, {'Content-Type': 'text/html'});
            res.end('<html><body><p>Ciao!</p></body></html>');
            break;
        default:
            res.writeHead(404, {'Content-Type': 'text/plain'});
            res.end('404 Not Found');
    }
});

proxy.listen(PROXY_PORT);
httpServer.listen(HTTP_SERVER_PORT);

https://gist.github.com/fracasula/d15ae925835c636a5672311ef584b999