Reproxy is a simple edge HTTP(s) server / reverse proxy supporting various providers (docker, static, file, consul catalog). One or more providers supply information about the requested server, requested URL, destination URL, and health check URL. It is distributed as a single binary or as a docker container.

• Automatic SSL termination with Let's Encrypt
• Support of user-provided SSL certificates
• Simple but flexible proxy rules
• Static, command-line proxy rules provider
• Dynamic, file-based proxy rules provider
• Docker provider with an automatic discovery
• Consul Catalog provider with discovery by service tags
• Support of multiple (virtual) hosts
• Optional traffic compression
• User-defined size limits and timeouts
• Single binary distribution
• Docker container distribution
• Built-in static assets server with optional "SPA friendly" mode
• Support for redirect rules
• Optional limiter for the overall activity as well as for user's activity
• Live health check and fail-over/load-balancing
• Management server with routes info and prometheus metrics
• Plugins support via RPC to implement custom functionality
• Optional logging with both Apache Log Format, and simplified stdout reports.

---

   

Server (host) can be set as FQDN, i.e. s.example.com or * (catch all). Requested url can be regex, for example ^/api/(.*) and destination url may have regex matched groups in, i.e. http://d.example.com:8080/$1. For the example above http://s.example.com/api/something?foo=bar will be proxied to http://d.example.com:8080/something?foo=bar.

For convenience, requests with the trailing / and without regex groups expanded to /(.*), and destinations in those cases expanded to /$1. I.e. /api/ -> http://127.0.0.1/service will be translated to ^/api/(.*) -> http://127.0.0.1/service/$1

Both HTTP and HTTPS supported. For HTTPS, static certificate can be used as well as automated ACME (Let's Encrypt) certificates. Optional assets server can be used to serve static files. Starting reproxy requires at least one provider defined. The rest of parameters are strictly optional and have sane default.

Examples:

• with a static provider: reproxy --static.enabled --static.rule="example.com/api/(.*),https://api.example.com/$1"
• with an automatic docker discovery: reproxy --docker.enabled --docker.auto
• as a docker container docker up -p 80:8080 umputun/reproxy --docker.enabled --docker.auto
• with automatic SSL docker up -p 80:8080 -p 443:8443 umputun/reproxy --docker.enabled --docker.auto --ssl.type=auto --ssl.fqdn=example.com

Install

Reproxy distributed as a small self-contained binary as well as a docker image. Both binary and image support multiple architectures and multiple operating systems, including linux_x86_64, linux_arm64, linux_arm, macos_x86_64, macos_arm64, windows_x86_64 and windows_arm. We also provide both arm64 and x86 deb and rpm packages.

• for a binary distribution download the proper file in the release section
• docker container available on Docker Hub as well as on Github Container Registry. I.e. docker pull umputun/reproxy or docker pull ghcr.io/umputun/reproxy.

Latest stable version has :vX.Y.Z docker tag (with :latest alias) and the current master has :master tag.

Providers

Proxy rules supplied by various providers. Currently included - file, docker, static and consul-catalog. Each provider may define multiple routing rules for both proxied request and static (assets). User can sets multiple providers at the same time.

See examples of various providers in examples

Static provider

This is the simplest provider defining all mapping rules directly in the command line (or environment). Multiple rules supported. Each rule is 3 or 4 comma-separated elements server,sourceurl,destination[,ping-url]. For example:

• *,^/api/(.*),https://api.example.com/$1 - proxy all request to any host/server with /api prefix to https://api.example.com
• example.com,/foo/bar,https://api.example.com/zzz,https://api.example.com/ping - proxy all requests to example.com and with /foo/bar url to https://api.example.com/zzz and it sses https://api.example.com/ping for the health check.

The last (4th) element defines an optional ping url used for health reporting. I.e.*,^/api/(.*),https://api.example.com/$1,https://api.example.com/ping. See Health check section for more details.

File provider

This provider uses yaml file with routing rules.

reproxy --file.enabled --file.name=config.yml

Example of config.yml:

default: # the same as * (catch-all) server
  - { route: "^/api/svc1/(.*)", dest: "http://127.0.0.1:8080/blah1/$1" }
  - {
      route: "/api/svc3/xyz",
      dest: "http://127.0.0.3:8080/blah3/xyz",
      ping: "http://127.0.0.3:8080/ping",
    }
srv.example.com:
  - { route: "^/api/svc2/(.*)", dest: "http://127.0.0.2:8080/blah2/$1/abc" }
  - { route: "^/web/", dest: "/var/www", "assets": true }

This is a dynamic provider and file change will be applied automatically.

Docker provider

Docker provider supports a fully automatic discovery (with --docker.auto) with no extra configuration needed. By default it redirects all requests like http://<container_name>:<container_port>/(.*) to the internal IP of the given container and the exposed port. Only active (running) containers will be detected.

This default can be changed with labels:

• reproxy.server - server (hostname) to match. Also can be a list of comma-separated servers.
• reproxy.route - source route (location)
• reproxy.dest - destination path. Note: this is not full url, but just the path which will be appended to container's ip:port
• reproxy.port - destination port for the discovered container
• reproxy.ping - ping path for the destination container.
• reproxy.assets - set assets mapping as web-root:location, for example reproxy.assets=/web:/var/www
• reproxy.enabled - enable (yes, true, 1) or disable (no, false, 0) container from reproxy destinations.

Pls note: without --docker.auto the destination container has to have at least one of reproxy.* labels to be considered as a potential destination.

With --docker.auto, all containers with exposed port will be considered as routing destinations. There are 3 ways to restrict it:

• Exclude some containers explicitly with --docker.exclude, i.e. --docker.exclude=c1 --docker.exclude=c2 ...
• Allow only a particular docker network with --docker.network
• Set the label reproxy.enabled=false or reproxy.enabled=no or reproxy.enabled=0

If no reproxy.route defined, the default is http://<container_name>:<container_port>/(.*). In case if all proxied source have the same pattern, for example /api/(.*) user can define the common prefix (in this case /api) for all container-based routes. This can be done with --docker.prefix parameter.

Docker provider also allows to define multiple set of reproxy.N.something labels to match multiple distinct routes on the same container. This is useful as in some cases a single container may expose multiple endpoints, for example, public API and some admin API. All the labels above can be used with "N-index", i.e. reproxy.1.server, reproxy.1.port and so on. N should be in 0 to 9 range.

This is a dynamic provider and any change in container's status will be applied automatically.

Consul Catalog provider

Use: reproxy --consul-catalog.enabled

Consul Catalog provider calls Consul API periodically (every second by default) to obtain services, which has any tag with reproxy. prefix. User can redefine check interval with --consul-catalog.interval command line flag as well as consul address with --consul-catalog.address command line option. The default address is http://127.0.0.1:8500.

For example:

reproxy --consul-catalog.enabled --consul-catalog.address=http://192.168.1.100:8500 --consul-catalog.interval=10s  

By default, provider sets values for every service:

• enabled false
• server *
• route ^/(.*)
• dest http://<SERVICE_ADDRESS_FROM_CONSUL>/$1
• ping http://<SERVICE_ADDRESS_FROM_CONSUL>/ping

This default can be changed with tags:

• reproxy.server - server (hostname) to match. Also, can be a list of comma-separated servers.
• reproxy.route - source route (location)
• reproxy.dest - destination path. Note: this is not full url, but just the path which will be appended to service's ip:port
• reproxy.port - destination port for the discovered service
• reproxy.ping - ping path for the destination service.
• reproxy.enabled - enable (yes, true, 1) or disable (any different value) service from reproxy destinations.

Compose-specific details

In case if rules set as a part of docker compose environment, destination with the regex group will conflict with compose syntax. I.e. attempt to use https://api.example.com/$1 in compose environment will fail due to a syntax error. The standard solution here is to "escape" $ sign by replacing it with $$, i.e. https://api.example.com/$$1. This substitution supported by docker compose and has nothing to do with reproxy itself. Another way is to use @ instead of $ which is supported on reproxy level, i.e. https://api.example.com/@1_

SSL support

SSL mode (by default none) can be set to auto (ACME/LE certificates), static (existing certificate) or none. If auto turned on SSL certificate will be issued automatically for all discovered server names. User can override it by setting --ssl.fqdn value(s)

Logging

By default no request log generated. This can be turned on by setting --logger.enabled. The log (auto-rotated) has Apache Combined Log Format

User can also turn stdout log on with --logger.stdout. It won't affect the file logging above but will output some minimal info about processed requests, something like this:

2021/04/16 01:17:25.601 [INFO]  GET - /echo/image.png - xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx - 200 (155400) - 371.661251ms
2021/04/16 01:18:18.959 [INFO]  GET - /api/v1/params - xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx - 200 (74) - 1.217669m

Assets Server

Users may turn the assets server on (off by default) to serve static files. As long as --assets.location set it treats every non-proxied request under assets.root as a request for static files. The assets server can be used without any proxy providers; in this mode, reproxy acts as a simple web server for the static content. Assets server also supports "spa mode" with --assets.spa where all not-found request forwarded to index.html.

In addition to the common assets server, multiple custom assets servers are supported. Each provider has a different way to define such a static rule, and some providers may not support it at all. For example, multiple asset servers make sense in static (command line provider), file provider, and even useful with docker providers, however it makes very little sense with consul catalog provider.

1. static provider - if source element prefixed by assets: or spa: it will be treated as file-server. For example *,assets:/web,/var/www, will serve all /web/* request with a file server on top of /var/www directory.
2. file provider - setting optional fields assets: true or spa: true
3. docker provider - reproxy.assets=web-root:location, i.e. reproxy.assets=/web:/var/www. Switching to spa mode done by setting reproxy.spa to yes or true

Assets server supports caching control with the --assets.cache=<duration> parameter. 0s duration (default) turns caching control off. A duration is a sequence of decimal numbers, each with optional fraction and a unit suffix, such as "300ms", "1.5h" or "2h45m". Valid time units are "ns", "us" (or "µs"), "ms", "s", "m", "h" and "d".

There are two ways to set cache duration:

1. A single value for all static assets. This is as simple as --assets.cache=48h.
2. Custom duration for different mime types. It should include two parts - the default value and the pairs of mime:duration. In command line this looks like multiple --assets.cache options, i.e. --assets.cache=48h --assets.cache=text/html:24h --assets.cache=image/png:2h. Environment values should be comma-separated, i.e. ASSETS_CACHE=48h,text/html:24h,image/png:2h

Using reproxy as a base image

Serving purely static content is one of the popular use cases. Usually this used for the separate frontend container providing UI only. With the assets server such a container is almost trivial to make. This is an example from the container serving reproxy.io

FROM node:16-alpine as build

WORKDIR /build
COPY site/ /build
COPY README.md /build/src/index.md

RUN yarn --frozen-lockfile
RUN yarn build
RUN	ls -la /build/public

FROM ghcr.io/umputun/reproxy
COPY --from=build /build/public /srv/site
EXPOSE 8080
USER app
ENTRYPOINT ["/srv/reproxy", "--assets.location=/srv/site"]

All it needs is to copy stastic assets to some location and passing this location as "--assets.location to reproxy entrypoint.

SPA-friendly mode

Some SPA applications counts on proxy to handle 404 on static asset in a special way, by redirecting it to "/index.html". This is similar to nginx's try_files $uri $uri/ … directive and, apparently, this functionality somewhat important for the modern web apps.

This mode is off by default and can be turned on by setting --assets.spa or ASSETS_SPA=true env.

Redirects

By default reproxy treats destination as a proxy location, i.e. it invokes http call internally and returns response back to the client. However by prefixing destination url with @code this behaviour can be changed to a permanent (status code 301) or temporary (status code 302) redirects. I.e. destination set to @301 https://example.com/something with cause permanent http redirect to Location: https://example.com/something

supported codes:

• @301, @perm - permanent redirect
• @302, @temp, @tmp - temporary redirect

More options

• --gzip enables gzip compression for responses.
• --max=N allows to set the maximum size of request (default 64k). Setting it to 0 disables the size check.
• --header sets extra header(s) added to each proxied response.
• --drop-header drops headers from incoming request.

For example this is how it can be done with the docker compose:

  environment:
      - HEADER=
          X-Frame-Options:SAMEORIGIN,
          X-XSS-Protection:1; mode=block;,
          Content-Security-Policy:default-src 'self'; style-src 'self' 'unsafe-inline';

• --timeout.* various timeouts for both server and proxy transport. See timeout section in All Application Options

Default ports

In order to eliminate the need to pass custom params/environment, the default --listen is dynamic and trying to be reasonable and helpful for the typical cases:

• If anything set by users to --listen all the logic below ignored and host:port passed in and used directly.
• If nothing set by users to --listen and reproxy runs outside of the docker container, the default is 127.0.0.1:80 for http mode (ssl.type=none) and 127.0.0.1:443 for ssl mode (ssl.type=auto or ssl.type=static).
• If nothing set by users to --listen and reproxy runs inside the docker, the default is 0.0.0.0:8080 for http mode, and 0.0.0.0:8443 for ssl mode.

Another default set in the similar dynamic way is --ssl.http-port. For run inside of the docker container it set to 8080 and without to 80.

Ping, health checks and failover

reproxy provides 2 endpoints for this purpose:

• /ping responds with pong and indicates what reproxy up and running
• /health returns 200 OK status if all destination servers responded to their ping request with 200 or 417 Expectation Failed if any of servers responded with non-200 code. It also returns json body with details about passed/failed services.

In addition to the endpoints above, reproxy supports optional live health checks. In this case (if enabled), each destination checked for ping response periodically and excluded failed destination routes. It is possible to return multiple identical destinations from the same or various providers, and the only passed picked. If numerous matches were discovered and passed - the final one picked according to lb-type strategy (by default random selection).

To turn live health check on, user should set --health-check.enabled (or env HEALTH_CHECK_ENABLED=true). To customize checking interval --health-check.interval= can be used.

Management API

Optional, can be turned on with --mgmt.enabled. Exposes 2 endpoints on mgmt.listen (address:port):

• GET /routes - list of all discovered routes
• GET /metrics - returns prometheus metrics (http_requests_total, response_status and http_response_time_seconds)

see also examples/metrics

Errors reporting

Reproxy returns 502 (Bad Gateway) error in case if request doesn't match to any provided routes and assets. In case if some unexpected, internal error happened it returns 500. By default reproxy renders the simplest text version of the error - "Server error". Setting --error.enabled turns on the default html error message and with --error.template user may set any custom html template file for the error rendering. The template has two vars: {{.ErrCode}} and {{.ErrMessage}}. For example this template oh my! {{.ErrCode}} - {{.ErrMessage}} will be rendered to oh my! 502 - Bad Gateway

Throttling

Reproxy allows to define system level max req/sec value for the overall system activity as well as per user. 0 values (default) treated as unlimited.

User activity limited for both matched and unmatched routes. All unmatched routes considered as a "single destination group" and get a common limiter which is rate*3. It means if 10 (req/sec) defined with --throttle.user=10 the end user will be able to perform up to 30 request pers second for either static assets or unmatched routes. For matched routes this limiter maintained per destination (route), i.e. request proxied to s1.example.com/api will allow 10 r/s and the request proxied to s2.example.com will allow another 10 r/s.

Plugins support

The core functionality of reproxy can be extended with external plugins. Each plugin is an independent process/container implementing rpc server. Plugins registered with reproxy conductor and added to the chain of the middlewares. Each plugin receives request with the original url, headers and all matching route info and responds with the headers and the status code. Any status code >= 400 treated as an error response and terminates flow immediately with the proxy error. There are two types of headers plugins can set:

• HeadersIn - incoming headers. Those will be sent to the proxied url
• HeadersOut - outgoing headers. Will be sent back to the client

By default headers set by a plugin will be mixed with the original headers. In case if plugin need to control all the headers, for example drop some of them, OverrideHeaders* field can be set by a plugin indicating to the core reporxy process the need to overwrite all the headers instead of mixing them in.

• OverrideHeadersIn - indicates plugin responsible for all incoming headers.
• OverrideHeadersOut - indicates plugin responsible for all outgoing headers

To simplify the development process all the building blocks provided. It includes lib.Plugin handling registration, listening and dispatching calls as well as lib.Request and lib.Response defining input and output. Plugin's authors should implement concrete handlers satisfying func(req lib.Request, res *lib.HandlerResponse) (err error) signature. Each plugin may contain multiple handlers like this.

See examples/plugin for more info

Container security

By default, the reproxy container runs under the root user to simplify the initial setup and access the docker's socket. This is needed to allow the docker provider discovery of the running containers. However, if such a discovery is not required or the docker provider not in use, it is recommended to change the user to some less-privileged one. It can be done on the docker-compose level and on docker level with user option.

Sometimes, even with inside-the-docker routing, it makes sense to disable the docker provider and setup rules with either static or file provider. All the containers running within a compose sharing the same network and accessible via local DNS. User can have a rule like this to avoid docker discovery: - STATIC_RULES=*,/api/email/(.*),http://email-sender:8080/$$1. This rule expects email-sender container defined inside the same compose. Please note: users can achieve the same result by using the docker network even if the destination service was defined in a different compose file. This way reproxy configuration can stay separate from the actual services.

There is nothing except reproxy binary inside the reproxy container, as it builds on top of an empty (scratch) image.

Options

Each option can be provided in two forms: command line or environment key:value pair. Some command line options have a short form, like -l localhost:8080 and all of them have the long form, i.e --listen=localhost:8080. The environment key (name) listed for each option as a suffix, i.e. [$LISTEN].

All size options support unit suffixes, i.e. 10K (or 10k) for kilobytes, 16M (or 16m) for megabytes, 10G (or 10g) for gigabytes. Lack of any suffix (i.e. 1024) means bytes.

Some options are repeatable, in this case user may pass it multiple times with the command line, or comma-separated in env. For example --ssl.fqdn is such an option and can be passed as --ssl.fqdn=a1.example.com --ssl.fqdn=a2.example.com or as env SSL_ACME_FQDN=a1.example.com,a2.example.com

This is the list of all options supporting multiple elements:

• ssl.fqdn (SSL_ACME_FQDN)
• assets.cache (ASSETS_CACHE)
• docker.exclude (DOCKER_EXCLUDE)
• static.rule ($STATIC_RULES)

All Application Options

  -l, --listen=                     listen on host:port (default: 0.0.0.0:8080/8443 under docker, 127.0.0.1:80/443 without) [$LISTEN]
  -m, --max=                        max request size (default: 64K) [$MAX_SIZE]
  -g, --gzip                        enable gz compression [$GZIP]
  -x, --header=                     outgoing proxy headers to add
      --drop-header=                incoming headers to drop [$DROP_HEADERS]
      --lb-type=[random|failover]   load balancer type (default: random) [$LB_TYPE]
      --signature                   enable reproxy signature headers [$SIGNATURE]
      --dbg                         debug mode [$DEBUG]

ssl:
      --ssl.type=[none|static|auto] ssl (auto) support (default: none) [$SSL_TYPE]
      --ssl.cert=                   path to cert.pem file [$SSL_CERT]
      --ssl.key=                    path to key.pem file [$SSL_KEY]
      --ssl.acme-location=          dir where certificates will be stored by autocert manager (default: ./var/acme) [$SSL_ACME_LOCATION]
      --ssl.acme-email=             admin email for certificate notifications [$SSL_ACME_EMAIL]
      --ssl.http-port=              http port for redirect to https and acme challenge test (default: 8080 under docker, 80 without) [$SSL_HTTP_PORT]
      --ssl.fqdn=                   FQDN(s) for ACME certificates [$SSL_ACME_FQDN]

assets:
  -a, --assets.location=            assets location [$ASSETS_LOCATION]
      --assets.root=                assets web root (default: /) [$ASSETS_ROOT]
      --assets.spa                  spa treatment for assets [$ASSETS_SPA]
      --assets.cache=               cache duration for assets [$ASSETS_CACHE]

logger:
      --logger.stdout               enable stdout logging [$LOGGER_STDOUT]
      --logger.enabled              enable access and error rotated logs [$LOGGER_ENABLED]
      --logger.file=                location of access log (default: access.log) [$LOGGER_FILE]
      --logger.max-size=            maximum size before it gets rotated (default: 100M) [$LOGGER_MAX_SIZE]
      --logger.max-backups=         maximum number of old log files to retain (default: 10) [$LOGGER_MAX_BACKUPS]

docker:
      --docker.enabled              enable docker provider [$DOCKER_ENABLED]
      --docker.host=                docker host (default: unix:///var/run/docker.sock) [$DOCKER_HOST]
      --docker.network=             docker network [$DOCKER_NETWORK]
      --docker.exclude=             excluded containers [$DOCKER_EXCLUDE]
      --docker.auto                 enable automatic routing (without labels) [$DOCKER_AUTO]
      --docker.prefix=              prefix for docker source routes [$DOCKER_PREFIX]

consul-catalog:
      --consul-catalog.enabled      enable consul catalog provider [$CONSUL_CATALOG_ENABLED]
      --consul-catalog.address=     consul address (default: http://127.0.0.1:8500) [$CONSUL_CATALOG_ADDRESS]
      --consul-catalog.interval=    consul catalog check interval (default: 1s) [$CONSUL_CATALOG_INTERVAL]

file:
      --file.enabled                enable file provider [$FILE_ENABLED]
      --file.name=                  file name (default: reproxy.yml) [$FILE_NAME]
      --file.interval=              file check interval (default: 3s) [$FILE_INTERVAL]
      --file.delay=                 file event delay (default: 500ms) [$FILE_DELAY]

static:
      --static.enabled              enable static provider [$STATIC_ENABLED]
      --static.rule=                routing rules [$STATIC_RULES]

timeout:
      --timeout.read-header=        read header server timeout (default: 5s) [$TIMEOUT_READ_HEADER]
      --timeout.write=              write server timeout (default: 30s) [$TIMEOUT_WRITE]
      --timeout.idle=               idle server timeout (default: 30s) [$TIMEOUT_IDLE]
      --timeout.dial=               dial transport timeout (default: 30s) [$TIMEOUT_DIAL]
      --timeout.keep-alive=         keep-alive transport timeout (default: 30s) [$TIMEOUT_KEEP_ALIVE]
      --timeout.resp-header=        response header transport timeout (default: 5s) [$TIMEOUT_RESP_HEADER]
      --timeout.idle-conn=          idle connection transport timeout (default: 90s) [$TIMEOUT_IDLE_CONN]
      --timeout.tls=                TLS hanshake transport timeout (default: 10s) [$TIMEOUT_TLS]
      --timeout.continue=           expect continue transport timeout (default: 1s) [$TIMEOUT_CONTINUE]

mgmt:
      --mgmt.enabled                enable management API [$MGMT_ENABLED]
      --mgmt.listen=                listen on host:port (default: 0.0.0.0:8081) [$MGMT_LISTEN]

error:
      --error.enabled               enable html errors reporting [$ERROR_ENABLED]
      --error.template=             error message template file [$ERROR_TEMPLATE]

health-check:
      --health-check.enabled        enable automatic health-check [$HEALTH_CHECK_ENABLED]
      --health-check.interval=      automatic health-check interval (default: 300s) [$HEALTH_CHECK_INTERVAL]

throttle:
      --throttle.system=            throttle overall activity' (default: 0) [$THROTTLE_SYSTEM]
      --throttle.user=              limit req/sec per user and per proxy destination (default: 0) [$THROTTLE_USER]

plugin:
      --plugin.enabled              enable plugin support [$PLUGIN_ENABLED]
      --plugin.listen=              registration listen on host:port (default: 127.0.0.1:8081) [$PLUGIN_LISTEN]

Help Options:
  -h, --help                        Show this help message

Status

The project is under active development and may have breaking changes till v1 is released. However, we are trying our best not to break things unless there is a good reason. As of version 0.4.x, reproxy is considered good enough for real-life usage, and many setups are running it in production.