node-xhr2 behind a proxy - food for thoughts

[asnowfix]

I am working on this topic right now.

Browser's XMLHttpRequest objects do not have an API to set an egress proxy, because everything is cabled by the Browser's internals. Node-speaking, the HTTP & HTTPS Agents are managed by the Browser, not by the XMLHttpRequest root object.

I think it would be good to keep the same principles, by adding a setAgents method (or an agents construction time-option) rather than a setProxy. The HTTP and/or HTTPS agents would be created by the upper layer (dropbox-js in this case), depending on the needs.

Opinion?

[pwnall]

How about using node_httpAgent and note_httpsAgent properties to set the Agents? You can set them on an instance-by-instance basis, or you can change them in XMLHttpRequest.prototype

Would this work?

[asnowfix]

This is what I had in mind: In my locally modified xhr2, this is what I am doing, with the following change:

1. I have created an external interface construct(options.agents) and setAgents() to avoid fiddling directly with internal prototypes & variables
2. I have renamed @node_httpAgent into @httpAgent (and same for httpsAgent), because it was more consistent with other class members.

If you are Ok with this, then I'll move forward & propose a patch (likely tomorrow in my timezone)

[asnowfix]

Just uploaded #2

[pwnall]

Thank you for #2, I merged it!

How would you feel about a XMLHttpRequest.nodejsSetAgents() method that would set the prototype properties?

This way, you can use the following in your code that uses dropbox.js

Dropbox.Xhr.Request.nodejsSetAgents(....)

The nice thing about this approach is that if dropbox.js ever switches to another XHR library, proxy-setting code will fail right away during development, instead of silently ignoring the agent-related properties.

[asnowfix]

In my local copy of Dropbox-js, I rather added a dependency on node-tunnel & gave additional Client instanciation parameter then passed down to xhr2. But I admit that I could rather leaver Dropbox-js un-modified & use the shortcut you propose. (1) Less code is always better than the opposite and (2) that lets dropbox-js of an additional dependency.

I think that the additional interface you propose is fine, but I would rather let you implent it, if you do not mind.

[pwnall]

Sweet, I'll get that in soon, and I will release 0.0.4 once I get some tests for events in.

[pwnall]

I hope this works now!