Last Updated: February 25, 2016

node.js proxy server, useful for vagrant and local dev

Sometimes when I'm developing a site locally that makes use of subdomains and/or alternate domains, i want links to resources in the markup to resolve properly. This little node.js proxy server listens for certain hosts on port 80, and forwards those requests to a port that vagrant is listening on. This is one way to skin a cat: My way.

It is meant to be run on your host machine, when vagrant is listening on port 8080, and you have the desired hosts listed in /etc/hosts on both host and guest machines.

var http = require('http');

var server = http.createServer(function(req,res){
 console.log(req.headers.host + req.url);
 var config = {
 "path": req.url,
 "port": 8080,
 "method": req.method,
 "host": req.headers.host,
 "agent": false
 };
 config.headers = req.headers;
 var req2 = http.request(config,function(res2){
 res.statusCode = res2.statusCode;
 // depending on your use case, you may wish to omit certain headers
 var omit_headers = ['x-content-length','x-date','x-etag','x-last-modified'];
 for (var k in res2.headers) {
 if ( omit_headers.indexOf(k) === -1 ) {
 res.setHeader(k,res2.headers[k]);
 }
 }
 res2.on('data',function(chunk){
 res.write(chunk);
 });
 res2.on('end',function(){
 res.end();
 });
 });
 req2.on('error', function(e) {
 console.log('problem with request: ' + e.message);
 });
 req2.end();
});

['mydomain.dev','z.mydomain.dev'].forEach(function(thishost){
 server.listen(80,thishost,function(){
 console.log('listening for ' + thishost + ' on :80');
 });
});