feat: Replace agentkeepalive with native Node.js HTTP agents for proxy support

[tducret]

Hello 👋

Here is a PR proposition to be able to use apify CLI in a sandboxed environment (in my case, Claude code in the browser).

At the moment, we can't do apify login or apify info in such environment, because the apify-client doesn't handle the proxy configuration properly.
The commands are stuck.

Digging into it, I found out that the agentkeepalive module doesn't support proxy (see node-modules/agentkeepalive#22 (comment) for instance).

I first attempted to use proxy-agents, but it turns out the built-in agents can support both keepalive and proxies out of the box.

So this PR removes agentkeepalive while maintaining the same keep-alive functionality and adding proxy support capability.

Test

To test it locally, I created a transparent proxy (we don't intercept requests to avoid self-certificate issues):

mitmdump --listen-port 8000 --ignore-hosts '.*:*' --set dns_log=true

And in another terminal, I tested the Apify client with :

export HTTPS_PROXY=http://localhost:8000
export APIFY_TOKEN=[REPLACE_WITH_VALID_TOKEN]

node get-user-info.js  # See code below

#!/usr/bin/env node

const { ApifyClient } = require('./dist/index.js');

async function main() {
    // Get token from environment variable
    const token = process.env.APIFY_TOKEN;

    if (!token) {
        console.error('Error: APIFY_TOKEN environment variable is not set');
        process.exit(1);
    }

    try {
        const client = new ApifyClient({ token });

        console.log('Fetching user information...\n');
        const userInfo = await client.user().get();

        console.log('User Information:');
        console.log(JSON.stringify(userInfo, null, 2));
    } catch (error) {
        console.error('Error fetching user information:');
        console.error(error.message);
        if (error.statusCode) {
            console.error(`Status Code: ${error.statusCode}`);
        }
        process.exit(1);
    }
}

main();

[tducret]

Hi there! Not sure about the right way to get feedback.
Could you please take a look @janbuchar @Pijukatel @B4nan ?

[Copilot]

Pull Request Overview

This PR replaces the agentkeepalive library with native Node.js HTTP agents to enable proxy support in sandboxed environments. The agentkeepalive module doesn't support proxy configuration, which prevented the Apify CLI from working properly in environments like Claude Code in the browser.

• Removes agentkeepalive dependency and uses built-in http.Agent and https.Agent instead
• Maintains keep-alive functionality by explicitly setting keepAlive: true in agent options
• Enables automatic proxy support via standard environment variables (HTTP_PROXY, HTTPS_PROXY)

Reviewed Changes

Copilot reviewed 2 out of 3 changed files in this pull request and generated no comments.

File	Description
src/http_client.ts	Replaced agentkeepalive imports with native node:http and node:https modules, updated agent instantiation to use native agents with keepAlive: true, and updated type annotations
package.json	Removed agentkeepalive dependency from the dependencies list
package-lock.json	Removed agentkeepalive and its transitive dependency humanize-ms, and correctly marked ms as a devDependency since it's only used by dev tools

---

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[janbuchar]

This is not the only thing that agentkeepalive adds.

...is it safe to ignore the rest of the changes they mention?

[tducret]

Good point, I've just added commit c424e90 with these optimizations.

[janbuchar]

I think this is good to go, but let's give @barjin a chance to review it too. Thanks @tducret!

[barjin]

Thank you @tducret , please address my comment. Otherwise, it looks good to go to me!

A quick look at the traffic captures shows a similar TCP connection count / timings, so these changes should be safe 👍

[barjin]

Can you please add both these modules as externals to rsbuild.config.ts (link)? They are not used outside of Node, so we don't need them in the browser bundle. Together, they add around 250kB to the bundle size.

[tducret]

Sure thing, done in commit f986aa4

[barjin]

Thank you!

[tducret]

Thanks for your reactivity ⚡
Is there anything I can do get this fix in the apify CLI?
Without it, I'm currently stuck in the Claude code cloud sandbox.

[janbuchar]

Thanks for your reactivity ⚡ Is there anything I can do get this fix in the apify CLI? Without it, I'm currently stuck in the Claude code cloud sandbox.

I'm going to release the updated apify-client-js now. Then it depends on how you installed the CLI. If you use the global npm install method, you should be able to just update your global apify-client version to the new one.