Proxy

Proxy binary accepts --auth-backend CLI option, which determines auth scheme and cluster routing method. Following routing backends are currently implemented:

• console new SCRAM-based console API; uses SNI info to select the destination project (endpoint soon)
• postgres uses postgres to select auth secrets of existing roles. Useful for local testing
• web (or link) sends login link for all usernames

Also proxy can expose following services to the external world:

• postgres protocol over TCP -- usual postgres endpoint compatible with usual postgres drivers
• postgres protocol over WebSockets -- same protocol tunneled over websockets for environments where TCP connection is not available. We have our own implementation of a client that uses node-postgres and tunnels traffic through websockets: https://github.com/neondatabase/serverless
• SQL over HTTP -- service that accepts POST requests with SQL text over HTTP and responds with JSON-serialised results.

SQL over HTTP

Contrary to the usual postgres proto over TCP and WebSockets using plain one-shot HTTP request achieves smaller amortized latencies in edge setups due to fewer round trips and an enhanced open connection reuse by the v8 engine. Also such endpoint could be used directly without any driver.

To play with it locally one may start proxy over a local postgres installation (see end of this page on how to generate certs with openssl):

./target/debug/proxy -c server.crt -k server.key --auth-backend=postgres --auth-endpoint=postgres://stas@127.0.0.1:5432/stas --wss 0.0.0.0:4444

If both postgres and proxy are running you may send a SQL query:

curl -k -X POST 'https://proxy.local.neon.build:4444/sql' \
  -H 'Neon-Connection-String: postgres://stas:pass@proxy.local.neon.build:4444/postgres' \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  --data '{
    "query":"SELECT $1::int[] as arr, $2::jsonb as obj, 42 as num",
    "params":[ "{{1,2},{\"3\",4}}", {"key":"val", "ikey":4242}]
  }' | jq

{
  "command": "SELECT",
  "fields": [
    { "dataTypeID": 1007, "name": "arr" },
    { "dataTypeID": 3802, "name": "obj" },
    { "dataTypeID": 23, "name": "num" }
  ],
  "rowCount": 1,
  "rows": [
    {
      "arr": [[1,2],[3,4]],
      "num": 42,
      "obj": {
        "ikey": 4242,
        "key": "val"
      }
    }
  ]
}

With the current approach we made the following design decisions:

1. SQL injection protection: We employed the extended query protocol, modifying the rust-postgres driver to send queries in one roundtrip using a text protocol rather than binary, bypassing potential issues like those identified in sfackler/rust-postgres#1030.

2. Postgres type compatibility: As not all postgres types have binary representations (e.g., acl's in pg_class), we adjusted rust-postgres to respond with text protocol, simplifying serialization and fixing queries with text-only types in response.

3. Data type conversion: Considering JSON supports fewer data types than Postgres, we perform conversions where possible, passing all other types as strings. Key conversions include:

   • postgres int2, int4, float4, float8 -> json number (NaN and Inf remain text)
   • postgres bool, null, text -> json bool, null, string
   • postgres array -> json array
   • postgres json and jsonb -> json object

4. Alignment with node-postgres: To facilitate integration with js libraries, we've matched the response structure of node-postgres, returning command tags and column oids. Command tag capturing was added to the rust-postgres functionality as part of this change.

Output options

User can pass several optional headers that will affect resulting json.

1. Neon-Raw-Text-Output: true. Return postgres values as text, without parsing them. So numbers, objects, booleans, nulls and arrays will be returned as text. That can be useful in cases when client code wants to implement it's own parsing or reuse parsing libraries from e.g. node-postgres.
2. Neon-Array-Mode: true. Return postgres rows as arrays instead of objects. That is more compact representation and also helps in some edge cases where it is hard to use rows represented as objects (e.g. when several fields have the same name).

Test proxy locally

Proxy determines project name from the subdomain, request to the round-rice-566201.somedomain.tld will be routed to the project named round-rice-566201. Unfortunately, /etc/hosts does not support domain wildcards, so we can use *.local.neon.buildwhich resolves to127.0.0.1`.

We will need to have a postgres instance. Assuming that we have set up docker we can set it up as follows:

docker run \
  --detach \
  --name proxy-postgres \
  --env POSTGRES_PASSWORD=proxy-postgres \
  --publish 5432:5432 \
  postgres:17-bookworm

Next step is setting up auth table and schema as well as creating role (without the JWT table):

docker exec -it proxy-postgres psql -U postgres -c "CREATE SCHEMA IF NOT EXISTS neon_control_plane"
docker exec -it proxy-postgres psql -U postgres -c "CREATE TABLE neon_control_plane.endpoints (endpoint_id VARCHAR(255) PRIMARY KEY, allowed_ips VARCHAR(255))"
docker exec -it proxy-postgres psql -U postgres -c "CREATE ROLE proxy WITH SUPERUSER LOGIN PASSWORD 'password';"

Let's create self-signed certificate by running:

openssl req -new -x509 -days 365 -nodes -text -out server.crt -keyout server.key -subj "/CN=*.local.neon.build"

Then we need to build proxy with 'testing' feature and run, e.g.:

RUST_LOG=proxy cargo run -p proxy --bin proxy --features testing -- --auth-backend postgres --auth-endpoint 'postgresql://postgres:proxy-postgres@127.0.0.1:5432/postgres' -c server.crt -k server.key

Now from client you can start a new session:

PGSSLROOTCERT=./server.crt psql  "postgresql://proxy:password@endpoint.local.neon.build:4432/postgres?sslmode=verify-full"