@fastify/http-proxy

What is @fastify/http-proxy?

@fastify/http-proxy is a Fastify plugin that allows you to easily set up an HTTP proxy server. It is designed to be simple to use and integrates seamlessly with the Fastify framework, providing a way to forward requests to other servers.

What are @fastify/http-proxy's main functionalities?

Basic Proxy Setup

This code sets up a basic proxy server that forwards requests from the local server to 'http://example.com'. The 'prefix' option allows you to specify a path prefix for the proxy.

const fastify = require('fastify')();
const proxy = require('@fastify/http-proxy');

fastify.register(proxy, {
  upstream: 'http://example.com',
  prefix: '/api', // optional
});

fastify.listen(3000, err => {
  if (err) throw err;
  console.log('Server listening on http://localhost:3000');
});

Custom Headers

This example demonstrates how to add custom headers to the proxied requests. The 'rewriteRequestHeaders' function allows you to modify the headers before they are sent to the upstream server.

const fastify = require('fastify')();
const proxy = require('@fastify/http-proxy');

fastify.register(proxy, {
  upstream: 'http://example.com',
  prefix: '/api',
  replyOptions: {
    rewriteRequestHeaders: (originalReq, headers) => {
      return {
        ...headers,
        'x-custom-header': 'my-custom-value'
      };
    }
  }
});

fastify.listen(3000, err => {
  if (err) throw err;
  console.log('Server listening on http://localhost:3000');
});

Error Handling

This example shows how to handle errors that occur during the proxying process. The 'onError' function allows you to customize the error response sent to the client.

const fastify = require('fastify')();
const proxy = require('@fastify/http-proxy');

fastify.register(proxy, {
  upstream: 'http://example.com',
  prefix: '/api',
  replyOptions: {
    onError: (reply, error) => {
      reply.send({ error: 'Proxy error', details: error.message });
    }
  }
});

fastify.listen(3000, err => {
  if (err) throw err;
  console.log('Server listening on http://localhost:3000');
});

Other packages similar to @fastify/http-proxy

http-proxy-middleware

http-proxy-middleware is a popular middleware for Node.js that allows you to create a proxy server. It is highly configurable and can be used with various frameworks like Express and Koa. Compared to @fastify/http-proxy, it offers more flexibility and is framework-agnostic, but it may require more setup for integration with Fastify.

node-http-proxy

node-http-proxy is a full-featured HTTP proxy library for Node.js. It provides a wide range of options for proxying HTTP and WebSocket requests. While it is more powerful and flexible than @fastify/http-proxy, it is also more complex and may require additional configuration to work seamlessly with Fastify.

express-http-proxy

express-http-proxy is a simple and easy-to-use proxy middleware for Express.js. It allows you to quickly set up a proxy server with minimal configuration. While it is designed specifically for Express, it can be adapted for use with Fastify, but @fastify/http-proxy offers a more straightforward integration with Fastify.

README

@fastify/http-proxy

Proxy your HTTP requests to another server, with hooks. This fastify plugin forwards all requests received with a given prefix (or none) to an upstream. All Fastify hooks are still applied.

@fastify/http-proxy is built on top of @fastify/reply-from, which enables single route proxying.

This plugin can be used in a variety of circumstances, for example if you have to proxy an internal domain to an external domain (useful to avoid CORS problems) or to implement your own API gateway for a microservices architecture.

Requirements

Fastify 4.x. See @fastify/http-proxy v7.x for Fastify 3.x compatibility.

Install

npm i @fastify/http-proxy fastify

Example

const Fastify = require('fastify');
const server = Fastify();

server.register(require('@fastify/http-proxy'), {
  upstream: 'http://my-api.example.com',
  prefix: '/api', // optional
  http2: false, // optional
});

server.listen({ port: 3000 });

This will proxy any request starting with /api to http://my-api.example.com. For instance http://localhost:3000/api/users will be proxied to http://my-api.example.com/users.

If you want to have different proxies on different prefixes you can register multiple instances of the plugin as shown in the following snippet:

const Fastify = require('fastify');
const server = Fastify();
const proxy = require('@fastify/http-proxy');

// /api/x will be proxied to http://my-api.example.com/x
server.register(proxy, {
  upstream: 'http://my-api.example.com',
  prefix: '/api', // optional
  http2: false, // optional
});

// /rest-api/123/endpoint will be proxied to http://my-rest-api.example.com/123/endpoint
server.register(proxy, {
  upstream: 'http://my-rest-api.example.com',
  prefix: '/rest-api/:id/endpoint', // optional
  rewritePrefix: '/:id/endpoint', // optional
  http2: false, // optional
});

// /auth/user will be proxied to http://single-signon.example.com/signon/user
server.register(proxy, {
  upstream: 'http://single-signon.example.com',
  prefix: '/auth', // optional
  rewritePrefix: '/signon', // optional
  http2: false, // optional
});

// /user will be proxied to http://single-signon.example.com/signon/user
server.register(proxy, {
  upstream: 'http://single-signon.example.com',
  rewritePrefix: '/signon', // optional
  http2: false, // optional
});

server.listen({ port: 3000 });

Notice that in this case it is important to use the prefix option to tell the proxy how to properly route the requests across different upstreams.

Also notice paths in upstream are ignored, so you need to use rewritePrefix to specify the target base path.

For other examples, see example.js.

Request tracking

@fastify/http-proxy can track and pipe the request-id across the upstreams. Using the hyperid module and the @fastify/reply-from built-in options a fairly simple example would look like this:

const Fastify = require('fastify');
const proxy = require('@fastify/http-proxy');
const hyperid = require('hyperid');

const server = Fastify();
const uuid = hyperid();

server.register(proxy, {
  upstream: 'http://localhost:4001',
  replyOptions: {
    rewriteRequestHeaders: (originalReq, headers) => ({
      ...headers,
      'request-id': uuid(),
    }),
  },
});

server.listen({ port: 3000 });

Options

This fastify plugin supports all the options of @fastify/reply-from plus the following.

Note that this plugin is fully encapsulated, and non-JSON payloads will be streamed directly to the destination.

upstream

An URL (including protocol) that represents the target server to use for proxying.

prefix

The prefix to mount this plugin on. All the requests to the current server starting with the given prefix will be proxied to the provided upstream.

Parametric path is supported. To register a parametric path, use the colon before the parameter name.

The prefix will be removed from the URL when forwarding the HTTP request.

rewritePrefix

Rewrite the prefix to the specified string. Default: ''.

preHandler

A preHandler to be applied on all routes. Useful for performing actions before the proxy is executed (e.g. check for authentication).

proxyPayloads

When this option is false, you will be able to access the body but it will also disable direct pass through of the payload. As a result, it is left up to the implementation to properly parse and proxy the payload correctly.

For example, if you are expecting a payload of type application/xml, then you would have to add a parser for it like so:

fastify.addContentTypeParser('application/xml', (req, done) => {
  const parsedBody = parsingCode(req);
  done(null, parsedBody);
});

preValidation

Specify preValidation function to perform the validation of the request before the proxy is executed (e.g. check request payload).

fastify.register(proxy, {
  upstream: `http://your-target-upstream.com`,
  preValidation: async (request, reply) => {
    if (request.body.method === 'invalid_method') {
      reply.code(400).send({ message: 'payload contains invalid method' });
    }
  },
});

config

An object accessible within the preHandler via reply.context.config. See Config in the Fastify documentation for information on this option. Note: this is merged with other configuration passed to the route.

replyOptions

Object with reply options for @fastify/reply-from.

internalRewriteLocationHeader

By default, @fastify/http-proxy will rewrite the location header when a request redirects to a relative path. In other words, the prefix will be added to the relative path.

If you want to preserve the original path, this option will disable this internal operation. Default: true.

Note that the rewriteHeaders option of @fastify/reply-from will retrieve headers modified (reminder: only location is updated among all headers) in parameter but with this option, the headers are unchanged.

httpMethods

An array that contains the types of the methods. Default: ['DELETE', 'GET', 'HEAD', 'PATCH', 'POST', 'PUT', 'OPTIONS'].

websocket

This module has partial support for forwarding websockets by passing a websocket boolean option.

A few things are missing:

1. request id logging
2. support ignoreTrailingSlash
3. forwarding more than one subprotocols. Note: Only the first subprotocol is being forwarded

Pull requests are welcome to finish this feature.

wsUpstream

Working only if property websocket is true.

An URL (including protocol) that represents the target websockets to use for proxying websockets. Accepted both https:// and wss://.

Note that if property wsUpstream not specified then proxy will try to connect with the upstream property.

wsServerOptions

The options passed to new ws.Server().

In case multiple websocket proxies are attached to the same HTTP server at different paths. In this case, only the first wsServerOptions is applied.

wsClientOptions

The options passed to the WebSocket constructor for outgoing websockets.

It also supports an additional rewriteRequestHeaders(headers, request) function that can be used to write the headers before opening the WebSocket connection. This function should return an object with the given headers. The default implementation forwards the cookie header.

Benchmarks

The following benchmarks where generated on a dedicated server with an Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-7700 CPU @ 3.60GHz and 64GB of RAM:

Framework	req/sec
express-http-proxy	2557
http-proxy	9519
@fastify/http-proxy	15919

The results were gathered on the second run of autocannon -c 100 -d 5 URL.

TODO

• Perform validations for incoming data
• Finish implementing websocket

License

MIT