Setting up and running the Mini Program Elixir Proxy

This guide will explain how to set up, run and use the proxy. Any tools needed will be linked to and left as an exercise to the reader to install. The readme will also only focus on Ubuntu and other platforms will not be discussed.

1. Install Elixir with Erlang

1.1 See the Installation Guide on the official elixir page.

2. Setting up the server

2.1 Installing Dependencies

To install dependencies run the following command in the project root.

mix deps.get

When asked to install rebar3 say yes.

2.2 Starting up the server

To start the server run the following command:

PROXY_HOST=https://hostname mix phx.server

The PROXY_HOST environment variable refers to the location where any requests will be proxied to. For example, if the server is started with PROXY_HOST=https://www.google.com mix phx.server all requests to the proxy will be forwarded to https://www.google.com. The server starts up on port 6000.

3. Using the proxy

The proxy is intended to be used for proxy-ing some GET calls to DELETE calls and some POST calls to PUT calls since the mini program system does not currently support the DELETE and PUT HTTP verbs. All headers sent will also be forwarded. All headers returned by the PROXY_HOST will also be returned to the client.

3.1 Making a PUT call

Simply prepend the put parameter in the api query for a POST request. For example, say you want to do the call PUT /profile/:id you would call the proxy with POST /put/profile/:id. The proxy will then do a PUT call to the PROXY_HOST on your behalf.

3.2 Making a DELETE call

Simply prepend the delete parameter in the api query for a GET request. For example, say you want to do the call DELETE /posts/:id you would call the proxy with GET /delete/posts/:id. The proxy will then do a DELETE call to the PROXY_HOST on your behalf.

All calls not prepended by either of these verbs will be forwarded without as-is to the PROXY_HOST.

4. Compiling for server deploy.

For deploying on a server it will be optimal to have a compiled binary that can just be run on the server. To create a self-contained release for running on a server run mix release this will compile the project with all needed binaries and libraries to a folder.

The folder can then be accessed at _build/dev/rel/mini_program_proxy_elixir.

The application can be run with bin/mini_program_proxy_elixir start.

5. Building into Docker container

A Dockerfile has already been included. It can be built with docker build -t tag:version ..

Afterwords it can be run like this:

docker run -it -p 6000:6000 -e PROXY_HOST=https://hostname tag:version