How to set up a reverse proxy in nodejs for multiple targets?

Question

I am using nodejs, expressjs and request to create a reverse proxy.

What I want is that when a request is sent to http://localhost:PORT/NAME/ that the corresponding page is loaded.

For example, if I enter http://localhost:1234/google/ the google website would be loaded and if I enter http://localhost:1234/stack/ the stackoverflow page would be loaded instead.

I tried code similar to the one here

var request = require('request');
app.get('/google', function(req,res) {
  //modify the url in any way you want
  var newurl = 'http://google.com/';
  request(newurl).pipe(res);
});

The problem is, that it loads the pages, but not completely, since the pages themselves wanna load images and css and stuff and make requests like /images/example.jpg And those obviously end with a 404 error.

Has anyone a handy solution for this problem? Especially since simply setting a route for /images would be no good, sinceI have two possible target servers and the proxy wouldn't know which would be the right one.

Answer 1

First of all, this is a forward proxy, second, here is a working code of what you want, modify it as you please

call this from http://127.0.0.1:5432/yahoo.com

var request = require('request');
var express = require('express')();
var session = require('cookie-session');

express.set('trust proxy', 1)
express.use(session({
  keys: ['key1', 'key2']
}))

express.use(function(req,res,next)
{
    if(req.url.indexOf('.com') < 0)
    {
        request('http://'+req.session.domain+'/'+req.params.site,function(err,response,body)
        {
            if(err)
                res.status(500).send(err);
            else
                res.send(body);
        });
    }
    else
        next();
});
express.get('/:site',function(req,res)
{
    request('http://'+req.params.site,function(err,response,body)
    {
        req.session.domain = req.params.site;
        if(err)
            res.status(500).send(err);
        else
            res.send(body);
    });
});
express.listen(5432);