Non-programmatic support for http and https proxies in Docker image

[naderghanbari]

Describe the feature request

Unleash Proxy Docker image, and Unleash Proxy as a standalone Node.js app, to support configuring http/http proxies via environment variables.

Background

Unleash proxy docker image, and Unleash Proxy as a standalone Node.js app, do not seem to support http/http proxies (for instance a corporate proxy). So running them out of the box inside a corporate network that requires a proxy for egress traffic is not possible.

There is a discussion around this here but the suggested workarounds do not seem to work.

The workaround, is to create a new Node.js app, depend on unleash-proxy, and then start the app using the following, and then Dockerize it, etc.

import { createApp } = from '@unleash/proxy';
import { URL } from 'url';
import { getAgent } from '@npmcli/agent';

const agentDefaultOptions = {
    keepAlive: true,
    keepAliveMsecs: 30 * 1000,
    timeout: 10 * 1000,
};

const app = createApp({
    httpOptions: {
        // By using the getAgent function from npmcli/agent, the support 
        // for PROXY, HTTP_PROXY, HTTPS_PROXY and NO_PROXY is unmasked
        // unleash-client-node masks this support by providing its own agents
        agent: (url: URL) => getAgent(url, { options: agentDefaultOptions }),
    },
});

app.listen(3000, () =>
    console.log(`Unleash Proxy listening on http://localhost:3000/proxy`),
);

I understand this may require changes in the Unleash Node Client. Otherwise, if the changes I mentioned above look good to the maintainers, I will be happy to make a pull request.

Solution suggestions

Make use of getAgent from npm/cli to make use of the out of the box support for proxies provided by npm/cli.

[kwasniew]

@naderghanbari we updated our own proxy (https://github.com/Unleash/unleash-proxy/releases/tag/v1.4.0) to use the latest Node SDK that added support for HTTP_PROXY and HTTPS_PROXY env vars. Please let us know if it solves your issue.

[naderghanbari]

Thanks @kwasniew , I confirm version 1.4.0 is working for us. It supports HTTP_PROXY and HTTPS_PROXY. It however does not support NO_PROXY. For our use case it works, but I imagine for some it may not.

I will close this issue, but do you see any downside to the approach I posted in the OP? That is passing the defaultOptions to the getAgent function of @npmcli/agent (which supports all of these env vars)?

[kwasniew]

@naderghanbari I described my design decision of not using @npmcli/agent here: Unleash/unleash-client-node#638. It comes down to TS support. If we get feedback about NO_PROXY we'll consider adding it later. Glad to hear the current solution works for your team.