Creating a proxy to another web api with Asp.net core

Question

I\'m developing an ASP.Net Core web application where I need to create a kind of \"authentication proxy\" to another (external) web service.

What I mean by authentic

Answer 1

Here is a basic implementation of Proxy library for ASP.NET Core:

This does not implement the authorization but could be useful to someone looking for a simple reverse proxy with ASP.NET Core. We only use this for development stages.

using System;
using System.Globalization;
using System.Linq;
using System.Net.Http;
using System.Threading.Tasks;
using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Builder;
using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Hosting;
using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Http;
using Microsoft.Extensions.DependencyInjection;
using Microsoft.Extensions.Logging;
using Microsoft.Extensions.Primitives;

namespace Sample.Proxy
{
    public class Startup
    {
        public void ConfigureServices(IServiceCollection services)
        {
            services.AddLogging(options =>
            {
                options.AddDebug();
                options.AddConsole(console =>
                {
                    console.IncludeScopes = true;
                });
            });

            services.AddProxy(options =>
            {
                options.MessageHandler = new HttpClientHandler
                {
                    AllowAutoRedirect = false,
                    UseCookies = true 
                };

                options.PrepareRequest = (originalRequest, message) =>
                {
                    var host = GetHeaderValue(originalRequest, "X-Forwarded-Host") ?? originalRequest.Host.Host;
                    var port = GetHeaderValue(originalRequest, "X-Forwarded-Port") ?? originalRequest.Host.Port.Value.ToString(CultureInfo.InvariantCulture);
                    var prefix = GetHeaderValue(originalRequest, "X-Forwarded-Prefix") ?? originalRequest.PathBase;

                    message.Headers.Add("X-Forwarded-Host", host);
                    if (!string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(port)) message.Headers.Add("X-Forwarded-Port", port);
                    if (!string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(prefix)) message.Headers.Add("X-Forwarded-Prefix", prefix);

                    return Task.FromResult(0);
                };
            });
        }

        private static string GetHeaderValue(HttpRequest request, string headerName)
        {
            return request.Headers.TryGetValue(headerName, out StringValues list) ? list.FirstOrDefault() : null;
        }

        public void Configure(IApplicationBuilder app)
        {
            app.UseWebSockets()
                .Map("/api", api => api.RunProxy(new Uri("http://localhost:8833")))
                .Map("/image", api => api.RunProxy(new Uri("http://localhost:8844")))
                .Map("/admin", api => api.RunProxy(new Uri("http://localhost:8822")))
                .RunProxy(new Uri("http://localhost:8811"));
        }

        public static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            var host = new WebHostBuilder()
                .UseKestrel()
                .UseIISIntegration()
                .UseStartup<Startup>()
                .Build();

            host.Run();
        }
    }
}

Answer 2

This post talks about writing a simple HTTP proxy logic in C# or ASP.NET Core. And allowing your project to proxy the request to any other URL. It is not about deploying a proxy server for your ASP.NET Core project.

Add the following code anywhere of your project.

        public static HttpRequestMessage CreateProxyHttpRequest(this HttpContext context, Uri uri)
        {
            var request = context.Request;

            var requestMessage = new HttpRequestMessage();
            var requestMethod = request.Method;
            if (!HttpMethods.IsGet(requestMethod) &&
                !HttpMethods.IsHead(requestMethod) &&
                !HttpMethods.IsDelete(requestMethod) &&
                !HttpMethods.IsTrace(requestMethod))
            {
                var streamContent = new StreamContent(request.Body);
                requestMessage.Content = streamContent;
            }

            // Copy the request headers
            foreach (var header in request.Headers)
            {
                if (!requestMessage.Headers.TryAddWithoutValidation(header.Key, header.Value.ToArray()) && requestMessage.Content != null)
                {
                    requestMessage.Content?.Headers.TryAddWithoutValidation(header.Key, header.Value.ToArray());
                }
            }

            requestMessage.Headers.Host = uri.Authority;
            requestMessage.RequestUri = uri;
            requestMessage.Method = new HttpMethod(request.Method);

            return requestMessage;
        }

This method covert user sends HttpContext.Request to a reusable HttpRequestMessage. So you can send this message to the target server.

After your target server response, you need to copy the responded HttpResponseMessage to the HttpContext.Response so the user's browser just gets it.

        public static async Task CopyProxyHttpResponse(this HttpContext context, HttpResponseMessage responseMessage)
        {
            if (responseMessage == null)
            {
                throw new ArgumentNullException(nameof(responseMessage));
            }

            var response = context.Response;

            response.StatusCode = (int)responseMessage.StatusCode;
            foreach (var header in responseMessage.Headers)
            {
                response.Headers[header.Key] = header.Value.ToArray();
            }

            foreach (var header in responseMessage.Content.Headers)
            {
                response.Headers[header.Key] = header.Value.ToArray();
            }

            // SendAsync removes chunking from the response. This removes the header so it doesn't expect a chunked response.
            response.Headers.Remove("transfer-encoding");

            using (var responseStream = await responseMessage.Content.ReadAsStreamAsync())
            {
                await responseStream.CopyToAsync(response.Body, _streamCopyBufferSize, context.RequestAborted);
            }
        }

And now the preparation is complete. Back to our controller:

    private readonly HttpClient _client;

    public YourController()
    {
        _client = new HttpClient(new HttpClientHandler()
        {
            AllowAutoRedirect = false
        });
    }

        public async Task<IActionResult> Rewrite()
        {
            var request = HttpContext.CreateProxyHttpRequest(new Uri("https://www.google.com"));
            var response = await _client.SendAsync(request, HttpCompletionOption.ResponseHeadersRead, HttpContext.RequestAborted);
            await HttpContext.CopyProxyHttpResponse(response);
            return Ok();
        }

And try to access it. It will be proxied to google.com

Answer 3

If anyone is interested, I took the Microsoft.AspNetCore.Proxy code and made it a little better with middleware.

Check it out here: https://github.com/twitchax/AspNetCore.Proxy. NuGet here: https://www.nuget.org/packages/AspNetCore.Proxy/. Microsoft archived the other one mentioned in this post, and I plan on responding to any issues on this project.

Basically, it makes reverse proxying another web server a lot easier by allowing you to use attributes on methods that take a route with args and compute the proxied address.

[ProxyRoute("api/searchgoogle/{query}")]
public static Task<string> SearchGoogleProxy(string query)
{
    // Get the proxied address.
    return Task.FromResult($"https://www.google.com/search?q={query}");
}

Answer 4

Piggy-backing on James Lawruk's answer https://stackoverflow.com/a/54149906/6596451 to get the twitchax Proxy attribute to work, I was also getting a 404 error until I specified the full route in the ProxyRoute attribute. I had my static route in a separate controller and the relative path from Controller's route was not working.

This worked:

public class ProxyController : Controller
{
    [ProxyRoute("api/Proxy/{name}")]
    public static Task<string> Get(string name)
    {
        return Task.FromResult($"http://www.google.com/");
    }
}

This does not:

[Route("api/[controller]")]
public class ProxyController : Controller
{
    [ProxyRoute("{name}")]
    public static Task<string> Get(string name)
    {
        return Task.FromResult($"http://www.google.com/");
    }
}

Hope this helps someone!

Answer 5

A nice reverse proxy middleware implementation can also be found here: https://auth0.com/blog/building-a-reverse-proxy-in-dot-net-core/

Note that I replaced this line here

requestMessage.Content?.Headers.TryAddWithoutValidation(header.Key, header.Value.ToArray());

with

requestMessage.Headers.TryAddWithoutValidation(header.Key, header.Value.ToString());

Original headers (e.g. like an authorization header with a bearer token) would not be added without my modification in my case.

Answer 6

I ended up implementing a proxy middleware inspired by a project in Asp.Net's GitHub.

It basically implements a middleware that reads the request received, creates a copy from it and sends it back to a configured service, reads the response from the service and sends it back to the caller.