proxrox  

Avoid SOP problems, combine origins, proxy services, use SSL, HTTP2, SSI and more… during development!

Installation | Usage | Configuration | Example projects | Support | Changelog

Proxrox is a command line utility which starts a local Nginx instance to serve up static files, proxy one or many services under a single origin, use SSL locally and, generally, to get a development environment that is similar to a production environment.

Proxrox achieves this using Nginx. When proxrox is asked to start a server, it will create an Nginx config file in a temporary location and start an Nginx instance using this config file. This means that proxrox can theoretically support all of Nginx's features.

You can also use Proxrox to debug web apps, as shown in the following presentation.

Installation

TL;DR; npm install -g proxrox. Nginx needs to be on the $PATH and executable without super-user privileges.

Detailed installation instructions can be found in INSTALLATION.md.

Usage

Start proxrox using a local configuration file. Format and supported options are explained in the CONFIGURATION.md file.

proxrox start .proxrox.yaml

Stop the running Nginx instances (stops all):

proxrox stop

Experience has shown that the definition of options via configuration files, e.g. .proxrox.yaml, is the most commonly used option. Working example projects with the recommended project setup can be seen in the examples directory.

Why proxrox exists

Production and development environment parity

Development environments should resemble production environments. This means that server-side includes, transport layer security, compression and more should exist during development. Not only is this important for page speed optimizations, but it also allows you to find security issues early, e.g. a secure page which references insecure content.

Serving multiple services under a single origin

Whether the app is service-oriented, micro service based, resource-oriented client architecture like or a single page app, the same-origin policy is often an issue for local development. People circumvent this issue in various ways. While most teams have good practices in place for production environments, development environments often lack this. Solutions I have seen range from cross-origin resource sharing for local development activated via feature flags to completely disabling web security in browsers.

Extending the space of possible solutions

Many people don't know or use server-side includes. There are probably various reasons for this. One thing that I noticed myself is that it just takes time to setup a proper development environment with proxy servers.

Support

Something not working as expected? Feel free to contact me on Twitter via @BenRipkens!