Node.js global proxy setting

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?

Solution 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();

Solution 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

Solution 3:

While not a Nodejs setting, I suggest you use proxychains which I find rather convenient. It is probably available in your package manager.

After setting the proxy in the config file (/etc/proxychains.conf for me), you can run proxychains npm start or proxychains4 npm start (i.e. proxychains [command_to_proxy_transparently]) and all your requests will be proxied automatically.

Config settings for me:

These are the minimal settings you will have to append

## Exclude all localhost connections (dbs and stuff)
localnet 0.0.0.0/0.0.0.0
## Set the proxy type, ip and port here
http    10.4.20.103 8080

(You can get the ip of the proxy by using nslookup [proxyurl])