Write your own CORS Proxy with NodeJS in no time.

#node #cors #proxy #javascript

You know CORS otherwise you would not read this article, I guess. So let's get beyond it and straight to the solution coded in a few lines of JavaScript. Or better before, show the problem.

My demo page below shows it.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
  <meta charset="UTF-8">
  <title>Title</title>
</head>
<body>
  <textarea id="output" rows="20" cols="120"></textarea>

  <script type="module">
    const outputNode = document.getElementById('output')
    const TARGET_URL = 'https://datahub.erde-und-umwelt.de/en/api/getServiceConfiguration/climateResilience'
    const URL = TARGET_URL
    // const URL = `http://localhost:8088/${TARGET_URL}`
    fetch(URL)
      .then((response) => response.json())
      .then((data) => outputNode.textContent = JSON.stringify(data, null, 2))
      .catch((exception) => {
        outputNode.textContent = exception
      })
  </script>
</body>
</html>

It simply tries to request some JSON data from a REST API and puts the result into a textarea.

But this does not happen, because of the wrong CORS header - the request is not allowed for every client.

So it only shows an error.

To get beyond this, you can write a backend that requests the data for you and put it through with a universal CORS header, so everyone can use it.

I will write this backend in NodeJS means JavaScript. The idea is, as also visible in the page, putting a proxy in front of the requested URL like this:

http://localhost:8088/${TARGET_URL}

That means a request to http://example.de is prefixed with http://localhost:8080 in result gives http://localhost:8080/http://example.de

The proxy receives the request and extracts the requested URL from the request and requests the data.

The code is pretty simple using the http-proxy-middleware.
There is not much to do, at all, as you can see below.

const express = require('express')
const cors = require('cors')
const { createProxyMiddleware } = require('http-proxy-middleware')

const app = express()
app.use(cors())
app.use(createProxyMiddleware({
  router: (req) => new URL(req.path.substring(1)),
  pathRewrite: (path, req) => (new URL(req.path.substring(1))).pathname,
  changeOrigin: true,
  logger: console
}))

app.listen(8088, () => {
  console.info('proxy server is running on port 8088')
})

I therefore use the external NodeJS modules express, http-proxy-middleware and cors.

How is it done?

This creates the server.

const app = express()

This enables CORS for all routes, methods and clients.

app.use(cors())

The only special tricky line is this.

app.use(createProxyMiddleware({
  router: (req) => new URL(req.path.substring(1)),
  pathRewrite: (path, req) => (new URL(req.path.substring(1))).pathname,
  changeOrigin: true,
  logger: console
}))

It creates the middleware. The middleware routes to the embedded URL and rewrites the path.

And that's it. You created a CORS Proxy in NodeJS.