Sam - January 28, 2019

How to create a simple Image HTTP proxy using Node.js

What is an image proxy server?

a proxy server is an intermediary server between you and the websites you browse. it’s like a gateway between you and the Internet. When you are using a proxy server, your request first taken by the proxy server. The proxy server examines the request. Then it connects with the real server which contains the website and forwards you the data from that server. Proxy servers provide various levels of functionalities. for example, if you are hosting several websites on your VPS, you can use a proxy server to direct requests to different websites based on the URLs in the requests.

Nodejs introduction

JavaScript developers always suffered from not being able to do server-side codes. Node.js was developed as medicine to them. Node.js is not a programming language but a runtime environment built on top of Chrome’s V8 engine which enables you to execute JavaScript in the server side. Of course, Node.js includes a rich library of JavaScript modules which simplifies the server-side developments. Node.js does not just replace other server-side platforms, but it does with so much potential. Could you believe that you can create a proxy-server with just 20 lines of code? Well, that is what you are going to witness next.

In this guide, I assume you are having a VPS server with Ubuntu installed on it. let’s proceed with the very beginning, installing Node.js.

Installing Node.js

There are two ways you can install Node.js on Ubuntu. You can use Ubuntu repository or you can use NodeSource via PPA. Whatever the way you use, you will need ubuntu’s apt-get tool. If you are working with Ubuntu, you should already be familiar with apt-get. It is good practice to update your apt-get tool before downloading any package.

sudo apt-get update

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