I have a simple Express based Node.js web server that I'm using for development of a JavaScript application. I set up the server to use node-http-proxy to proxy API requests the application makes to a Jetty server that is running on a different domain and port. This setup has been working flawlessly until I started to run into problems with session management.
Upon authentication the application server returns a cookie with an auth token representing the server session. When I run the JS application off of my filesystem (file://) I can see that once client receives the cookie, it is sent in all the subsequent API requests. When I run the JS app on the node server and API calls are proxied through node-http-proxy (RoutingProxy) the request headers never include the cookie.
Is there something I need to handle manually to support this type of session persistence through the proxy? I've been digging through the node-http-proxy code but it is a little over my head because I am new to Node.
https://gist.github.com/2475547 or:
var express = require('express'),
routingProxy = require('http-proxy').RoutingProxy(),
app = express.createServer();
var apiVersion = 1.0,
apiHost = my.host.com,
apiPort = 8080;
function apiProxy(pattern, host, port) {
return function(req, res, next) {
if (req.url.match(pattern)) {
routingProxy.proxyRequest(req, res, {host: host, port: port});
} else {
next();
}
}
}
app.configure(function () {
// API proxy middleware
app.use(apiProxy(new RegExp('\/' + apiVersion + '\/.*'), apiHost, apiPort));
// Static content middleware
app.use(express.methodOverride());
app.use(express.bodyParser());
app.use(express.static(__dirname));
app.use(express.errorHandler({
dumpExceptions: true,
showStack: true
}));
app.use(app.router);
});
app.listen(3000);
Ideally the job of a proxy is to just forward a request to the destination, and should not strip off critical headers like cookies, But if it is, i think you should file a issue against them here https://github.com/nodejitsu/node-http-proxy/issues.
Also you said the request headers never include the cookie, Is it possible the client never received it?
I found a way to implement this by forking and modifying node-http-proxy. It serves my current purpose which is a development environment. For any sort of serious consideration it needs to be fleshed out into a more legitimate solution.
The details can be found in the issue I filed in GitHub: https://github.com/nodejitsu/node-http-proxy/issues/236#issuecomment-5334457
I would love some input on this solution, especially if I'm going completely in the wrong direction.