Node.js - Simple Proxy to Pass Through HTTP Requests to an External URL
This is a quick example of how to proxy an HTTP request through a Node.js server to an external URL and return the response.
The below example is a super simple HTTP server that returns a random image that's been proxied from the Lorem Picsum sample image website (https://picsum.photos/). The server is built with the Node.js http library, and uses the request library from npm to send the external HTTP request that is proxied.
Node.js code to proxy a request
Before jumping into the example, this is the line of code to proxy a request in Node.js:
req.pipe(request('[URL_TO_PROXY]')).pipe(res);
Node.js HTTP Proxy Server Demo
An random image proxied from Lorem Picsum through Node.js.
(See on CodeSandbox at https://codesandbox.io/s/node-js-simple-http-proxy-server-example-bzye2)
Node Proxy Server Code
As you can see there's not much to the example Node.js server code, it contains the minimal required to demonstrate rendering a proxied image in the browser.
The default route (e.g. for the root / path) returns an <img /> with the source attribute pointing to the relative /random-image/${Math.random()} URL, the random number is to ensure a new image is displayed on each page refresh.
The /random-image/* route is where the proxying happens, the HTTP request received by the Node.js server (req) is piped into a new request to the picsum image URL (https://picsum.photos/300) sent with the request library, which is then piped back into the original Node.js response (res).
const http = require('http');
const request = require('request');
http.createServer(function (req, res) {
if (req.url.startsWith('/random-image')) {
// proxy random image from picsum website
const imageUrl = 'https://picsum.photos/300';
req.pipe(request(imageUrl)).pipe(res);
} else {
// default page with image tag that renders random image
res.setHeader('Content-type', 'text/html');
res.write(`<img src="/random-image/${Math.random()}" />`);
res.end();
}
}).listen(8080);
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