How can I use an http proxy with node.js http.Client?

Question

Tim Macfarlane's answer was close with regards to using a HTTP proxy.

Using a HTTP proxy (for non secure requests) is very simple. You connect to the proxy and make the request normally except that the path part includes the full url and the host header is set to the host you want to connect to.
Tim was very close with his answer but he missed setting the host header properly.

var http = require("http");

var options = {
  host: "proxy",
  port: 8080,
  path: "http://www.google.com",
  headers: {
    Host: "www.google.com"
  }
};
http.get(options, function(res) {
  console.log(res);
  res.pipe(process.stdout);
});

For the record his answer does work with http://nodejs.org/ but that's because their server doesn't care the host header is incorrect.

EDIT: As of Feb 11th 2020, request is fully deprecated. No new changes are expected.

You can use request, I just found it's unbelievably easy to use proxy on node.js, just with one external "proxy" parameter, even more it supports HTTPS through a http proxy.

var request = require('request');

request({
  'url':'https://anysite.you.want/sub/sub',
  'method': "GET",
  'proxy':'http://yourproxy:8087'
},function (error, response, body) {
  if (!error && response.statusCode == 200) {
    console.log(body);
  }
})

One thing that took me a while to figure out, use 'http' to access the proxy, even if you're trying to proxy through to a https server. This works for me using Charles (osx protocol analyser):

var http = require('http');

http.get ({
    host: '127.0.0.1',
    port: 8888,
    path: 'https://www.google.com/accounts/OAuthGetRequestToken'
}, function (response) {
    console.log (response);
});

I bought private proxy server, after purchase I got:

255.255.255.255 // IP address of proxy server
99999 // port of proxy server
username // authentication username of proxy server
password // authentication password of proxy server

And I wanted to use it. First answer and second answer worked only for http(proxy) -> http(destination), however I wanted http(proxy) -> https(destination).

And for https destination it would be better to use HTTP tunnel directly. I found solution here.

Node v8:

const http = require('http')
const https = require('https')
const username = 'username'
const password = 'password'
const auth = 'Basic ' + Buffer.from(username + ':' + password).toString('base64')

http.request({
  host: '255.255.255.255', // IP address of proxy server
  port: 99999, // port of proxy server
  method: 'CONNECT',
  path: 'kinopoisk.ru:443', // some destination, add 443 port for https!
  headers: {
    'Proxy-Authorization': auth
  },
}).on('connect', (res, socket) => {
  if (res.statusCode === 200) { // connected to proxy server
    https.get({
      host: 'www.kinopoisk.ru',
      socket: socket,    // using a tunnel
      agent: false,      // cannot use a default agent
      path: '/your/url'  // specify path to get from server
    }, (res) => {
      let chunks = []
      res.on('data', chunk => chunks.push(chunk))
      res.on('end', () => {
        console.log('DONE', Buffer.concat(chunks).toString('utf8'))
      })
    })
  }
}).on('error', (err) => {
  console.error('error', err)
}).end()

Node v14:

const http = require('http');
const https = require('https');
const username = 'username';
const password = 'password';
const auth = 'Basic ' + Buffer.from(username + ':' + password).toString('base64');

http.request({
  host: '255.255.255.255', // IP address of proxy server
  port: 99999, // port of proxy server
  method: 'CONNECT',
  path: 'kinopoisk.ru:443', // some destination, add 443 port for https!
  headers: {
    'Proxy-Authorization': auth
  },
}).on('connect', (res, socket) => {
  if (res.statusCode === 200) { // connected to proxy server
    const agent = new https.Agent({ socket });
    https.get({
      host: 'www.kinopoisk.ru',
      path: '/',
      agent,      // cannot use a default agent
    }, (res) => {
      let chunks = []
      res.on('data', chunk => chunks.push(chunk))
      res.on('end', () => {
        console.log('DONE', Buffer.concat(chunks).toString('utf8'))
      })
    })
  }
}).on('error', (err) => {
  console.error('error', err)
}).end();

As @Renat here already mentioned, proxied HTTP traffic comes in pretty normal HTTP requests. Make the request against the proxy, passing the full URL of the destination as the path.

var http = require ('http');

http.get ({
    host: 'my.proxy.com',
    port: 8080,
    path: 'http://nodejs.org/'
}, function (response) {
    console.log (response);
});