No response using express proxy route - node.js

Question

I've written a small proxy with nodejs, express and htt-proxy. It works well for serving local files but fails when it comes to proxy to external api:
var express = require('express'),
app = express.createServer(),
httpProxy = require('http-proxy');
app.use(express.bodyParser());
app.listen(process.env.PORT || 1235);
var proxy = new httpProxy.RoutingProxy();
app.get('/', function(req, res) {
res.sendfile(__dirname + '/index.html');
});
app.get('/js/*', function(req, res) {
res.sendfile(__dirname + req.url);
});
app.get('/css/*', function(req, res) {
res.sendfile(__dirname + req.url);
});
app.all('/*', function(req, res) {
req.url = 'v1/public/yql?q=show%20tables&format=json&callback=';
proxy.proxyRequest(req, res, {
host: 'query.yahooapis.com', //yahoo is just an example to verify its not the apis fault
port: 8080
});
});
The problem is that there is no response from the yahoo api, maybe there is an response but i dont came up in the browser.

Answer 1

Even simpler with pipe and request-Package
var request = require('request');
app.use('/api', function(req, res) {
var url = apiUrl + req.url;
req.pipe(request(url)).pipe(res);
});
It pipes the whole request to the API and pipes the response back to the requestor. This also handles POST/PUT/DELETE and all other requests \o/
If you also care about query string you should pipe it as well
req.pipe(request({ qs:req.query, uri: url })).pipe(res);

Answer 2

Maybe your code is different when you're testing, but I'm querying the same URL as in your code sample using the following:
http://query.yahooapis.com:8080/v1/public/yql?q=show%20tables&format=json&callback=
and I get nothing back. My guess is you want to change port to 80 (from 8080) -- it works when I change it like so:
http://query.yahooapis.com:80/v1/public/yql?q=show%20tables&format=json&callback=
So that means it should be:
proxy.proxyRequest(req, res, {
host: 'query.yahooapis.com', //yahoo is just an example to verify its not the apis fault
port: 80
});

Answer 3

Maybe I use http-proxy in a wrong way. Using restler does what I want:
var express = require('express'),
app = express.createServer(),
restler = require('restler');
app.use(express.bodyParser());
app.listen( 1234);
app.get('/', function(req, res) {
console.log(__dirname + '/index.html')
res.sendfile(__dirname + '/index.html');
});
app.get('/js/*', function(req, res) {
res.sendfile(__dirname + req.url);
});
app.get('/css/*', function(req, res) {
res.sendfile(__dirname + req.url);
});
app.all('/*', function(req, res) {
restler.get('http://myUrl.com:80/app_test.php/api' + req.url, {
}).on('complete', function (data) {
console.log(data)
res.json(data)
});
});

Answer 4

I ended up using http-proxy-middleware.
The code looks something like this:
var express = require("express");
var proxy = require("http-proxy-middleware");
const theProxy = proxy({
target: "query.yahooapis.com",
changeOrigin: true,
});
app.use("/", theProxy);
app.listen(process.env.PORT || 3002);

Answer 5

That's what I've been using for a while. Can handle both JSON and binary requests.
app.use('/api', (req, res, next) => {
const redirectUrl = config.api_server + req.url.slice(1);
const redirectedRequest = request({
url: redirectUrl,
method: req.method,
body: req.readable ? undefined : req.body,
json: req.readable ? false : true,
qs: req.query,
// Pass redirect back to the browser
followRedirect: false
});
if (req.readable) {
// Handles all the streamable data (e.g. image uploads)
req.pipe(redirectedRequest).pipe(res);
} else {
// Handles everything else
redirectedRequest.pipe(res);
}
});