sp-rest-proxy - SharePoint REST API Proxy for local Front-end development tool-chains

Allows performing API calls to local Express application with forwarding the queries to a remote SharePoint instance.

Original concept of the proxy was created to show how it could be easy to implements real world data communications for SharePoint Framework local serve mode during web parts debug without deployment to SharePoint tenant. Now the tool is used with multiple teams for modern front-end solutions rapid development.

Supports SPFx and PnP JS

Supported SharePoint versions

SharePoint Online
SharePoint On-Prem (2019, 2016, 2013)
SharePoint On-Prem 2010 (limited support)

Development paradigms

SPA development (Angular, React, Vue.js, etc.) in serve mode against real data for On-Prem and Online
SharePoint Framework with local workbench
SharePoint AddIns development

Supports proxying

REST API
CSOM requests
SOAP web services
Custom services
Static resources

Proxy modes

API Proxy server
Socket gateway server
Socket gateway client
Custom Express apps embed mode

Socket proxying allows to forward API from behind NAT (experimental).

How to use as a module

1. Install NPM module in the project:

npm install sp-rest-proxy

2. Create server.js with the following code:

const RestProxy = require('sp-rest-proxy');

const settings = {
  configPath: './config/private.json', // Location for SharePoint instance mapping and credentials
  port: 8080,                          // Local server port
  staticRoot: './static'               // Root folder for static content
};

const restProxy = new RestProxy(settings);
restProxy.serve();

Configuration parameters cheatsheet

3. Add npm task for serve into package.json:

"scripts": {
  "serve": "node ./server.js"
}

Check if the path to server.js is correct.

4. Run npm run serve.

5. Provide SharePoint configuration parameters.

6. Test local API proxy in action.

How to develop

Install

1. Clone/fork the project:

git clone https://github.com/koltyakov/sp-rest-proxy

2. CMD to the project folder.

3. Install dependencies:

npm install

4. Build:

npm run build

5. Run the server:

npm run serve

or serve in TypeScript directly

npm run ts-serve

Prompts credentials for a SharePoint site.

6. Navigate to http://localhost:8080 (or whatever in settings)

7. Ajax REST calls as if you were in SharePoint site page context:

8. Tests.

npm run test

Webpack Dev Server

/* webpack.config.js */
const RestProxy = require('sp-rest-proxy');

const port = process.env.WEBPACK_DEV_SERVER_PORT || 9090;

module.exports = {
  // Common Webpack settings
  // ...
  devServer: {
    watchContentBase: true,
    writeToDisk: true,
    port,
    before: (app) => {
      // Register SP API Proxy
      new RestProxy({ port }, app).serveProxy();

      // Other routes
      // ...
    }
  }
};

TypeScript support

In early days of sp-rest-proxy, the library was written in ES6 and used module.exports which was kept after migrating to TypeScript later on for the backward compatibility reasons.

In TypeScript, it's better to import the lib from sp-rest-proxy/dist/RestProxy to get advantages of types:

import RestProxy, { IProxySettings } from 'sp-rest-proxy/dist/RestProxy';

const settings: IProxySettings = {
  configPath: './config/private.json'
};

const restProxy = new RestProxy(settings);
restProxy.serve();

Authentication settings

The proxy provides wizard-like approach for building and managing config files for node-sp-auth (Node.js to SharePoint unattended http authentication).

SharePoint Online:
- User credentials (SAML/ADFS)
- Add-In Only permissions
- On-Demand authentication (using Electron popup)
SharePoint 2019, 2016, 2013:
- User credentials (NTLM, NTLM v2)
- ADFS user credentials
- Form-based authentication (FBA)
- Form-based authentication (Forefront TMG)
- Add-In Only permissions
- On-Demand authentication (using Electron popup)
SharePoint 2010:
- User credentials (NTLM, NTMLv2)
- Form-based authentication (FBA)
- Form-based authentication (Forefront TMG)

For more information please check node-sp-auth credential options and wiki pages. Auth settings are stored inside ./config/private.json.

PnPjs

sp-rest-proxy works with PnPjs (check out brief notice how to configure).

Load page context helper

sp-rest-proxy includes helper method for configuring page context - loadPageContext.

import { loadPageContext } from 'sp-rest-proxy/dist/utils/env';
import { Web } from '@pnp/sp';

// loadPageContext - gets correct URL in localhost and SP environments
loadPageContext().then(async () => {

  // In both localhost and published to SharePoint page
  // `_spPageContextInfo` will contain correct info for vital props

  // PnPjs's Web object should be created in the following way
  const web = new Web(_spPageContextInfo.webAbsoluteUrl);

  // Then goes ordinary PnPjs code
  const batch = web.createBatch();

  const list = web.getList(`${_spPageContextInfo.webServerRelativeUrl}/List/ListName`);
  const entityName = await list.getListItemEntityTypeFullName();

  [1, 2, 3, 4].forEach((el) => {
    list.items.inBatch(batch).add({
      Title: `${el}`
    }, entityName);
  });

  await batch.execute();
  console.log('Done');

}).catch(console.warn);

JSOM (SharePoint JavaScript Object Model)

JSOM can be used in local development mode with sp-rest-proxy with some additional setup.

The local development workbench page should contain JSOM init scripts:

<script type="text/javascript" src="/_layouts/15/1033/initstrings.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="/_layouts/15/init.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="/_layouts/15/MicrosoftAjax.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="/_layouts/15/sp.core.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="/_layouts/15/sp.runtime.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="/_layouts/15/sp.js"></script>

Check out the example.

SharePoint Framework

Blog post article with setting up SPFx and Proxy

Use cases

Client side applications development with local serve, but real data from SharePoint
SharePoint Framework in local workbench with real data
Client applications integration test automation scenarios

ITJoePC/sp-rest-proxy