/powerbox-http-proxy

Primary LanguageGoApache License 2.0Apache-2.0

powerbox-http-proxy is a daemon that is sometimes helpful for porting legacy applications that want HTTP access to Sandstorm. It acts as an HTTP proxy, and makes powerbox requests on-demand for domains that the legacy application tries to access. It is used by the Tiny Tiny RSS Port

Building

Install a recent Go toolchain (new enough to support Go modules) and npm. Then run:

go build
npm install
npm run build

This will create two files, an executable powerbox-http-proxy and a file build/index.js

Configuration

To use powerbox-http-proxy with your application, you need to do the following:

  • Build the daemon and its front-end JavaScript helper, per the above instructions.
  • Add a <script> tag to your pages which includes the generated build/index.js.
  • Arrange for the url /_sandstorm/websocket to be served by the daemon; see below.
  • Arrange for your application to trust a root TLS cert generated by the daemon; this is necessary to proxy HTTPS requests.

The daemon is mainly configured through environment variables:

  • POWERBOX_PROXY_PORT specifies the port that the daemon should listen on for proxy requests; you should configure your application to use http://localhost:$POWERBOX_PROXY_PORT as its proxy for both http and https. Many applications will observe the variables http_proxy and https_proxy, so you can often make this happen by just defining those variables.
  • POWERBOX_WEBSOCKET_PORT specifies the port to listen on for connections from the JavaScript helper. You will want to configure your web server to point requests to /_sandstorm/websocket to this port.
  • CA_CERT_PATH is the path to which the daemon should write its root certificate. Configure your application to trust the cert written to this location.
  • DB_TYPE: The type of the database to use. Supported values are:
    • mysql for MySQL/MariaDB
    • sqlite3 for SQLite.
  • DB_URI: The location of a mysql database in which to store the daemon's private data. The format depends on the value of DB_TYPE.