Debate about whether headers are included in proxied request

[the1mills]

I am on the latest Node.js versions v9, v10, etc. I have a simple server which proxies the npm registry:

import http = require('http');

const s = http.createServer(function (clientRequest, clientResponse) {

  const proxy = http.request({
      hostname: 'registry.npmjs.org',
      port: 80,
      path: clientRequest.url,
      method: clientRequest.method
    },
    function (res) {
      res.pipe(clientResponse);
    });

   // do the clientRequest headers get written to the proxy request??
  clientRequest.pipe(proxy);

});

s.listen(3441);

I have a debate raging here about whether the original request headers are included in the request that gets sent to NPM:

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/50342072/why-doesnt-node-js-proxy-request-need-headers-included?noredirect=1#comment87711085_50342072

[the1mills]

So yeah my question is - are the original headers included or not?

[bnoordhuis]

No, they're not.

[ORESoftware]

Yeah ok, makes sense, to include them, just do this?

  // first write headers
  Object.keys(headers).forEach(function(k){
      proxy.write(`${k}\t${headers[k]}\r\n`);
  });
  
  // one more newline I think
  proxy.write('\n');

  // then write body
  clientRequest.pipe(proxy);

[bnoordhuis]

No, that creates an outgoing request with headers in the request body.

Add them as the .headers option to http.request() but scrub them first if you don't want to get pwned. Ditto for .path and other values that you copy from the incoming request.

Take a look at https://github.com/nodejitsu/node-http-proxy.

[ORESoftware]

Yeah I tried adding the headers to the options arg, but I got some JSON parsing errors which I thought was very strange.

[gireeshpunathil]

Guessing that this issue is resolved. /cc @ORESoftware and @the1mills (by this time I also have guessed you two are same)

[gireeshpunathil]

closing as addressed, please let me know if that is not the case