api-proxy

Safely make secret-key-required http requests from flat html sites.

Setup

Install dependency packages

npm install 

Add local env file

touch .env.local

Add secret keys to local env file

# .env.local

EXAMPLE_KEY_NAME=examplekeyvalue
FOO_KEYNAME=1234556

Development

npm start

Starts the google cloud function at http://localhost:8000/

Usage

From your application, send requests to the api-proxy endpoint.

The local api-proxy url is http://localhost:8000/ by default. You can change the port in package.json

Also include the 2 required query parameters:

api
A url encoded string.

keyNames
Two dimensional array of key/variables

Examples

Example Request

http://localhost:8000?api=https%3A%2F%2Fsome-api-url.com&keyNames=[["keyname", "ENV_VARIABLE_NAME"]]

Full Example

From your app, build api request url and send to api-proxy.

In api-proxy

# .env.local

APP_ID=abc123
APP_SECRET=2957556085278776407

In your app
(This example uses Axios to send reqeusts to api-proxy)

// api-proxy endpoint in local dev
const proxy = http://localhost:8000;

// actual api endpoint
const someAPI = https://api.someservice.com;

const keyNames = '[["app_id", "APP_ID"], ["app_secret", "APP_SECRET"]]'

// api proxy url w/ acutal api and keynames as params
let url = `${proxy}?api=${encodeURIComponent(someAPI)}`
url += `&keyNames=${keyNames}`

// Send request to api proxy
axios.get(url).then((resp) => {
  // Handle response
}).catch((err) => {
  // Handle error
})  

Usage in Production

Once you setup your live service (see below), send requests to the live endpoint. Everything else is the same.

Production Setup

The following sections assume you're using Google Cloud Functions. You can use any Nodejs environment though.

Follow the Google Cloud Functions documentation to create a function in the Nodejs environement.

The basic steps to create a function from the web console are:

Create a new funciton

Set the "function to run" to trigger

Add the contents of index.js via copy/paste.

Add the dependencies, which are

  {
    "@google-cloud/functions-framework": "^1.5.1",
    "axios": "^0.19.2"
  }

Set the needed environment variables, including the additional origin variable (see next section).

Production Environment Variables

Working off the full example above, the service would require 3 variables: APP_ID and APP_SECRET.

And a third, production-only variable to restrict incoming requests to only your app.

The variable name shoul be ORIGIN and value is your app's production url.

You only have to set these variables once.

Deployment

There are several options for deploying. If you're just starting w/ google cloud, the fastest way is to copy/paste in the web console.