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🚀 Reflare is a lightweight and scalable reverse proxy and load balancing library built for Cloudflare Workers. It sits in front of web servers (e.g. web application, storage platform, or RESTful API), forwards HTTP requests or WebSocket traffics from clients to upstream servers, and transforms responses with several optimizations to improve page loading time.

• ⚡ Serverless: Deploy instantly to the auto-scaling serverless platform built by Cloudflare. There's no need to manage virtual machines or containers.
• ✈️ Load Balancing: Distribute incoming traffics among different upstream services.
• ⚙️ Hackable: Deliver unique content based on visitor attributes, conduct A/B testing, or build custom middleware to hook into the lifecycle. (Experimental)
• 🛳️ Dynamic (Experimental): Store and update route definitions with Workers KV to avoid redundant redeployment.

📦 Installation

Start with reflare-template

Install wrangler CLI and authorize wrangler with a Cloudflare account.

npm install -g @cloudflare/wrangler
wrangler login

Generate a new project from reflare-template and install the dependencies.

wrangler generate reflare-app https://github.com/xiaoyang-sde/reflare-template
cd reflare-app
npm install

Edit or add route definitions in src/index.ts. Please read the examples and route definition section below for more details.

• Run npm run dev to preview Reflare with local development server provided by Miniflare.
• Run npm run deploy to publish Reflare on Cloudflare Workers.

Integrate with existing project

Install the reflare package.

npm install reflare

Import useReflare from reflare. useReflare accepts an object of options.

• provider: The location of the list of route definitions. (optional, defaults to static)
  • static: Reflare loads the route definitions from routeList.
  • kv: Reflare loads the route definitions from Workers KV. (Experimental)
• routeList: The initial list of route definitions. (optional, defaults to [], ignored if provider is not static)
• namespace: The Workers KV namespace that stores the list of route definitions. (required if provider is kv)

useReflare returns an object with the handle method and push method.

• The handle method takes the inbound Request to the Worker and returns the Response fetched from the upstream service.
• The push method takes a route and appends it to routeList.

import useReflare from 'reflare';

const handleRequest = async (
  request: Request,
): Promise<Response> => {
  const reflare = await useReflare();

  reflare.push({
    path: '/*',
    upstream: {
      domain: 'httpbin.org',
      protocol: 'https',
    },
  });

  return reflare.handle(request);
};

addEventListener('fetch', (event) => {
  event.respondWith(handleRequest(event.request));
});

Edit the route definition to change the behavior of Reflare. For example, the route definition below lets Reflare add the Access-Control-Allow-Origin: * header to each response from the upstream service.

{
  path: '/*',
  upstream: {
    domain: 'httpbin.org',
    protocol: 'https',
  },
  cors: {
    origin: '*',
  },
}

📔 Example

MDN Web Docs Mirror

Set up a reverse proxy for MDN Web Docs:

{
  path: '/*',
  upstream: {
    domain: 'developer.mozilla.org',
    protocol: 'https',
  },
}

WebSocket Proxy

Reflare could proxy WebSocket traffic to upstream services. Set up a reverse proxy for wss://echo.websocket.org:

{
  path: '/*',
  upstream: {
    domain: 'echo.websocket.org',
    protocol: 'https',
  },
}

S3 Bucket with custom response headers

Reflare could set custom headers to the request and response. Set up a reverse proxy for https://example.s3.amazonaws.com:

{
  path: '/*',
  upstream: {
    domain: 'example.s3.amazonaws.com',
    protocol: 'https',
  },

  headers: {
    response: {
      'x-response-header': 'Hello from Reflare',
    },
  },

  cors: {
    origin: ['https://www.example.com'],
    methods: ['GET', 'POST'],
    credentials: true,
  },
}

⚙️ Route Definition

Route Matching

Reflare implements express-like route matching. Reflare matches the path and HTTP method of each incoming request with the list of route definitions and forwards the request to the first matched route.

• path: The path that matches the route
• methods: The list of HTTP methods that match the route

// Matches all requests
reflare.push({
  path: '/*',
  /* ... */
});

// Matches GET and POST requests with path `/api`
reflare.push({
  path: '/api',
  methods: ['GET', 'POST'],
});

// Matches GET requests with path ending with `.json` in `/data`
reflare.push({
  path: '/data/*.json',
  methods: ['GET'],
});

Upstream

• domain: The domain name of the upstream server
• protocol: The protocol scheme of the upstream server (optional, defaults to 'https')
• port: The port of the upstream server (optional, defaults to 80 or 443 based on protocol)
• timeout: The maximum wait time on a request to the upstream server (optional, defaults to 10000)
• weight: The weight of the server that will be accounted for as part of the load balancing decision (optional, defaults to 1)

reflare.push({
  path: '/*',
  upstream: {
    domain: 'httpbin.org',
    protocol: 'https',
    port: 443,
    timeout: 10000,
    weight: 1,
  },
  /* ... */
});

Load Balancing

To load balance HTTP traffic to a group of servers, pass an array of server configurations to upstream. The load balancer will forward the request to an upstream server based on the loadBalancing.policy option.

• random: The load balancer will select a random upstream server from the server group. The optional weight parameter in the server configuration could influence the load balancing algorithm.
• ip-hash: The client's IP address is used as a hashing key to select the upstream server from the server group. It ensures that the requests from the same client will always be directed to the same server.

reflare.push({
  path: '/*',
  loadBalancing: {
    policy: 'random',
  },
  upstream: [
    {
      domain: 's1.example.com',
      protocol: 'https',
      weight: 20,
    },
    {
      domain: 's2.example.com',
      protocol: 'https',
      weight: 30,
    },
    {
      domain: 's3.example.com',
      protocol: 'https',
      weight: 50,
    },
  ],
  /* ... */
});

Firewall

Each incoming request is inspected against the firewall rules defined in the firewall property of the options object. The request will be blocked if it matches at least one firewall rule.

• field: The property of the incoming request to be inspected
  • asn: The ASN number of the incoming request (number)
  • ip: The IP address of the incoming request, e.g. 1.1.1.1 (string)
  • hostname: The content of the host header, e.g. github.com (string | undefined)
  • user-agent: The content of the user-agent header, e.g. Mozilla/5.0 (string | undefined)
  • country: The two-letter country code in the request, e.g. US (string | undefined)
  • continent: The continent of the incoming request, e.g. NA (string | undefined)
• value: The value of the firewall rule
• operator: The operator to be used to determine if the request is blocked
  • equal: Block the request if field is equal to value
  • not equal: Block the request if field is not equal to value
  • match: Block the request if value matches field (Expect field to be string and value to be RegExp)
  • not match: Block the request if value doesn't match field (Expect field to be string and value to be RegExp)
  • in: Block the request if field is in value (Expect value to be Array)
  • not in: Block the request if field is not in value (Expect value to be Array)
  • contain: Block the request if field contains value (Expect field and value to be string)
  • not contain: Block the request if field doesn't contain value (Expect field and value to be string)
  • greater: Block the request if field is greater than value (Expect field and value to be number)
  • less: Block the request if field is less than value (Expect field and value to be number)

reflare.push('/', {
  path: '/*',
  /* ... */
  firewall: [
    {
      field: 'ip',
      operator: 'in',
      value: ['1.1.1.1', '1.0.0.1'],
    },
    {
      field: 'user-agent',
      operator: 'match',
      value: /Chrome/,
    }
  ],
});

Headers

• request: Sets request header going upstream to the backend. Accepts an object. (optional, defaults to {})
• response: Sets response header coming downstream to the client. Accepts an object. (optional, defaults to {})

reflare.push({
  path: '/*',
  /* ... */
  headers: {
    request: {
      'x-example-header': 'hello server',
    },
    response: {
      'x-example-header': 'hello client',
    },
  },
});

Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS)

• origin: Configures the Access-Control-Allow-Origin CORS header. (optional, defaults to false)

  • boolean: set to true to reflect the origin of the request, or set to false to disable CORS.
  • string[]: an array of acceptable origins.
  • *: allow any origin to access the resource.

• methods: Configures the Access-Control-Allow-Methods CORS header. Expect an array of valid HTTP methods or *. (optional, defaults to reflecting the method specified in the request’s Access-Control-Request-Method header)

• allowedHeaders: Configures the Access-Control-Allow-Headers CORS header. Expect an array of HTTP headers or *. (optional, defaults to reflecting the headers specified in the request’s Access-Control-Request-Headers header.)

• exposedHeaders: Configures the Access-Control-Expose-Headers CORS header. Expect an array of HTTP headers or *. (optional, defaults to [])

• credentials: Configures the Access-Control-Allow-Credentials CORS header. Set to true to pass the header, or it is omitted. (optional, defaults to false)

• maxAge: Configures the Access-Control-Max-Age CORS header. Set to an integer to pass the header, or it is omitted. (optional)

reflare.push({
  path: '/*',
  /* ... */
  cors: {
    origin: true,
    methods: [
      'GET',
      'POST',
    ],
    allowedHeaders: [
      'Example-Header',
    ],
    exposedHeaders: [
      'Example-Header',
    ],
    credentials: true,
    maxAge: 86400,
  },
});

Optimization

Cloudflare Workers provides several optimizations by default.

• Brotli: Speed up page load times for visitors’ HTTPS traffic by applying Brotli compression.
• HTTP/2: Improve page load time by connection multiplexing, header compression, and server push.
• HTTP/3 with QUIC: Accelerate HTTP requests by using QUIC, which provides encryption and performance improvements compared to TCP and TLS.
• 0-RTT Connection Resumption: Improve performance for clients who have previously connected to the website.

🛳️ Dynamic Route Definition (Experimental)

Reflare could load the route definitions from Workers KV. Set the provider to kv and namespace to a Workers KV namespace (e.g. REFLARE) that binds to the current Worker. Reflare fetches the route definitions from namespace and handles each incoming request with the latest route definitions.

import useReflare from 'reflare';

declare const REFLARE: KVNamespace;

const handleRequest = async (
  request: Request,
): Promise<Response> => {
  const reflare = await useReflare({
    provider: 'kv',
    namespace: REFLARE,
  });
  return reflare.handle(request);
};

addEventListener('fetch', (event) => {
  event.respondWith(handleRequest(event.request));
});

The route definitions should be stored as a JSON array in the route-list key of namespace. The KV namespace could be modified with wrangler or Cloudflare API. The Reflare dashboard for route management is under development and will be released soon.

wrangler kv:key put --binding=[namespace] 'route-list' '[{"path":"/*","upstream":{"domain":"httpbin.org","protocol":"https"}}]'

🌎 Contributing

• Request a feature: Create an issue with the Feature request template.
• Report bugs: Create an issue with the Bug report template.
• Add new feature or fix bugs: Fork this repository, edit code, and send a pull request.