Noderouter

Noderouter is an HTTP/TCP programmable proxy application that can be used as a library and as a standalone software.

Features:

• completely written in nodejs without any external dependency to be secure and lightning fast!
• integrated service-discovery mechanism
• TCP tunneling useful for passthrough SSL connections
• integrated DNS to redirect specific traffic on internet
• supports both HTTP and HTTPS proxy
• supports path-based routing
• can run inside docker

Noderouter can be used to trasparently tunneling any kind of traffic based on TCP and HTTP[S].

A common usage of noderouter is the redirection of traffic based on url rules to a different local or remote address. In this way you can have several applications with different ports using noderouter ports as the gateway.

Noderouter integrates a DNS to eventually redirect traffic outside, it’s particularly useful when you’ve a microservice architecture but you need to test only some services locally while the others will be resolved by the DNS.

Example:

Getting started

Install

with npm

Global installation:

npm install -g @acore/noderouter

NOTE: You can also install Noderouter as a dependency of your project (npm install @acore/noderouter) and programmatically include the Router and/or the Client inside your application.

With git

git clone https://github.com/azerothcore/noderouter.git && cd noderouter

With docker

docker pull @acore/noderouter

NOTE: you can pull the image so you can use it later or directly run it

Hosts file

The node router exposes an http api with the /register and /deregister action that you can use to register/deregister your hosts. These actions can be used to register a proxy/tunnel passing a json string to configure them and managing the TTL (see documentation for more info)

However, the integrated noderouter client simplifies this process for you so you only need to create a proper json file for your hosts

Host.json file example:

{
  "noderouter": {
    "hosts": [
      {
        "connType": 4,
        "srcHost": "www.myfirstdomain.com",
        "dstHost": "localhost",
        "dstPort": 60000,
        "timeToLive": 300000
      },
      {
        "connType": 1,
        "srcHost": "www.myseconddomain.com",
        "dstHost": "localhost",
        "dstPort": 60001,
        "srcPath": "/from/this/path",
        "dstPath": "/to/this/other/path,
        "timeToLive": 300000
      }
    ],
    "options": {
      "enable": true,
      "routerHost": "localhost",
      "httpsApi": false,
      "logOpts": {
        "debug": true
      }
    }
  }
}

NOTE: to preload hosts directly at the router start, check the “configuration” section of this documentation.

Run

With npm

if you installed with -g flag then you can run it with the following command

To start the router:

noderouter

To start the client with your host list:

noderouter-client hosts.json

The commands above runs both the router and the client to register hosts defined inside your hosts.json. You can avoid the client command if you’re going to implement your own client.

Run this command: noderouter --help

for the complete list of available options:

Usage: noderouter [OPTIONS]
Options:
  -h, --help : show help information
  -c, --conf    : run the client with a custom configuration file
  --apiPort  : set the listening port for noderouter API
  --httpPort : set the listening port for the http proxy
  --tslPort  : set the listening port for the TSL proxy
  --apiSSL   : specify if the API is behind SSL

With git

If you’ve cloned the repo with git clone then you can “cd” inside that folder and use npm to run noderouter with several strategies. For example:

Run the router first:

npm run start:router

Then eventually the client:

npm run start:client host.js

The command above works in the same way of noderouter and noderouter-client hosts.json commands showed previously

you can run npm run for the entire list of npm scripts or just take a look at package.json file

NOTE: yarn run works aswell

With docker

If you’ve downloaded the git repo then there are several npm run commands to run the router and the client inside a docker container using docker-composer

To run it directly with docker run you can use the following command:

docker run @azerothcore/noderouter

However, you must open ports and set the correct environment variables. Check docker run documentation for it: https://docs.docker.com/engine/reference/run/

In alternative, you can configure your own docker-compose with the noderouter image from the docker hub.

Documentation

• JSDOC documentation

• test coverage

Host object

The hosts array that you can write inside the hosts.json or that you can pass to the API endpoints is composed by the following properties:

- {number} connType            : type of connection, see "Connection types enum"
- {string} srcHost             : source host
- {string} dstHost             : destination host
- {number} dstPort             : destination port
- {string} signature           : the client signature is an unique string to identify your client in the router registry. 
If you use our integrated client this parameter is optional and the signature will be automatically generated based on host information.
- {optional string} srcPath    : source path. It supports a regex matching rule
- {optional string} dstPath    : destination path. It supports a regex matching rule
- {optional number} timeToLive : TTL for renew the registration. If you put a value > 0 your client needs to refresh the connection before that the TTL expires

Connection types enum

  CONN_TYPE: {
    /** define an http -> service (http) proxy with path support */
    HTTP_HTTP_PROXY: 1,
    /** define a tls -> https -> service (on https) proxy with path support */
    HTTPS_HTTPS_PROXY: 2,
    /** define a tls -> https -> service (on http) proxy with path support */
    HTTPS_HTTP_PROXY: 3,
    /** define a tls -> service a TCP tunnel with TLS, SNI & SSL
     *  Passthrough support, but no proxy path possible */
    TLS_TUNNEL: 4,
  }

Router configuration

Some configurations for the router can be changed during the startup using command line options.

But if you need more control on router settings then you can create a routerConf.js file inside the /src/

and copy configurations from the original file:

https://github.com/azerothcore/noderouter/blob/master/src/conf/dist/routerConf.js

NOTE: your custom file will override default conf properties with a merge strategy.

You can change these options in several ways (ordered by importance):

1. with environment variables
2. creating a routerConf.js file under /src/conf folder (only for users who downloaded it with git, this file it’s git-ignored)
3. with command line options
4. with the -c/–conf command line argument or the env NR_CONF_FILE to load a custom conf file (suggested when installed with npm or with docker)

Environment variables

You can check the environment variable available here:

.env.dist-client

.env.dist-router

API endpoints

The router has its own API so you can create your own client in any language you want or just reuse the noderouter internal one programmatically.

POST /register & /unregister

For both /register and /unregister endpoints you need to send a POST request with the information that we showed inside the hosts file section

For instance, to register/unregister an host you can also use curl:

curl --header "Content-Type: application/json" \
     --request POST \
     --data '{"hosts": [{"connType": 4, "srcHost": "www.myfirstdomain.com", "dstHost": "localhost", "dstPort": 60000, "timeToLive": 0}}' \
     http://localhost:4010/register

curl --header "Content-Type: application/json" \
     --request POST \
     --data '{"hosts": [{"connType": 4, "srcHost": "www.myfirstdomain.com", "dstHost": "localhost", "dstPort": 60000, "timeToLive": 0}}' \
     http://localhost:4010/unregister

TODO:

• Implement test layer
• Add more configurations based on user feedback