Node.js global proxy setting

Question

I was working in a corporate network behind a proxy server. In my code I can set the proxy by using the approach mentioned in this thread.

But the problem is that most of the 3rd party modules do not have proxy setting and I cannot modify their code to add the proxy. Also, my code might be used in a direct connection environment which means I cannot hard-code my proxy setting in code.

I know NPM has a global setting for proxy which is

npm config set proxy http://proxy.company.com:8080
npm config set https-proxy http://proxy.company.com:8080

But I didn't find any config similar in Node.js.

Does Node.js support global proxy setting so that I don't need to change all codes and switch on and off easily?

Answer 1

Unfortunately, it seems that proxy information must be set on each call to http.request. Node does not include a mechanism for global proxy settings.

The global-tunnel-ng module on NPM appears to handle this, however:

var globalTunnel = require('global-tunnel-ng');

globalTunnel.initialize({
  host: '10.0.0.10',
  port: 8080,
  proxyAuth: 'userId:password', // optional authentication
  sockets: 50 // optional pool size for each http and https
});

After the global settings are establish with a call to initialize, both http.request and the request library will use the proxy information.

The module can also use the http_proxy environment variable:

process.env.http_proxy = 'http://proxy.example.com:3129';
globalTunnel.initialize();

Answer 2

I finally created a module to get this question (partially) resolved. Basically this module rewrites http.request function, added the proxy setting then fire. Check my blog post: https://web.archive.org/web/20160110023732/http://blog.shaunxu.me:80/archive/2013/09/05/semi-global-proxy-setting-for-node.js.aspx

Answer 3

You can try my package node-global-proxy which work with all node versions and most of http-client (axios, got, superagent, request etc.)

after install by

npm install node-global-proxy --save

a global proxy can start by

const proxy = require("node-global-proxy").default;

proxy.setConfig({
  http: "http://localhost:1080",
  https: "https://localhost:1080",
});
proxy.start();

/** Proxy working now! */

More information available here: https://github.com/wwwzbwcom/node-global-proxy