Tag Archives: asp.net

Reverse Proxy in ASP.NET Web API – Part 2

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At first I only needed the reverse proxy for a JSON rest API. Soon, however, it was expanded to also cover HTML content. Thus the below update to make sure any URLs in the HTML was replaced to correctly match the reverse proxy server and not the internal server:

public class ProxyHandler : DelegatingHandler
{
    private readonly string redirectUrl; 

    public ProxyHandler(string redirectUrl)
    {
        this.redirectUrl = redirectUrl;
    } 

    private async Task<HttpResponseMessage> RedirectRequest(HttpRequestMessage request, CancellationToken cancellationToken)
    {
        var redirectLocation = redirectUrl;
        var localPath = request.RequestUri.LocalPath.Replace("ExternalVirtualPath", "InternalVirtualPath"); 

        var client = new HttpClient(new HttpClientHandler() { AutomaticDecompression = DecompressionMethods.GZip | DecompressionMethods.Deflate }); 

        var clonedRequest = await HttpRequestMessageExtensions.CloneHttpRequestMessageAsync(request); 

        clonedRequest.RequestUri = new Uri(redirectLocation + localPath); 

        var httpResponseMessage = await client.SendAsync(clonedRequest, HttpCompletionOption.ResponseHeadersRead, cancellationToken);
        httpResponseMessage.Headers.Add("X-ReverseProxy", "true"); 

        if (httpResponseMessage.Content?.Headers?.ContentType != null)
        {
            if (httpResponseMessage.Content.Headers.ContentType.MediaType == "text/html")
            {
                var content = await httpResponseMessage.Content.ReadAsByteArrayAsync();
                var stringContent = Encoding.UTF8.GetString(content); 

                var newContent = stringContent.Replace("InternalVirtualPath", "ExternalVirtualPath");
                httpResponseMessage.Content = new StringContent(newContent, Encoding.UTF8, "text/html");
            }
        } 

        return httpResponseMessage;
    } 

    protected override
        Task<HttpResponseMessage> SendAsync(HttpRequestMessage request, System.Threading.CancellationToken cancellationToken)
    {
        return RedirectRequest(request, cancellationToken);
    }
}

Reverse Proxy in ASP.NET Web API

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Updated: Be sure to check my follow up post

Due to infrastructure limitations my current team was in need of a reverse proxy that could point to our ASP.NET Web API endpoint. After failing to get IT to setup a reverse proxy in the load balancer I ended up experimenting with a reverse proxy based on a simple implementation using Web API.

The first requirement is to intercept all requests made to the reverse proxy endpoint. Fortunately the Web API pipeline allows this via the DelegatingHandler:

public class ProxyHandler : DelegatingHandler{} 

public class WebApiConfig
{
    public static void Configure(HttpConfiguration config)
    {
        config.MessageHandlers.Add(new ProxyHandler());
        config.Routes.MapHttpRoute("abe", "{*path}");
    }
}

The configuration above adds the ProxyHandler to the general pipeline thus allowing it to intercept all requests which are processed by the Web API pipeline. Then a single catch-all route is added to make sure all requests are processed by the pipeline.

In the proxy delegating handler all requests must now be forwarded to the desired location:

public class ProxyHandler : DelegatingHandler
{
    private async Task<HttpResponseMessage> RedirectRequest(HttpRequestMessage request, CancellationToken cancellationToken)
    {
        var redirectLocation = "http://localhost:61948";
        var localPath = request.RequestUri.LocalPath; 

        var client = new HttpClient(); 

        var clonedRequest = await HttpRequestMessageExtensions.CloneHttpRequestMessageAsync(request); 

        clonedRequest.RequestUri = new Uri(redirectLocation + localPath); 

        return await client.SendAsync(clonedRequest, HttpCompletionOption.ResponseHeadersRead, cancellationToken);
    } 

    protected override
        Task<HttpResponseMessage> SendAsync(HttpRequestMessage request, System.Threading.CancellationToken cancellationToken)
    {
        return RedirectRequest(request, cancellationToken);
    }
}

I experienced some problems forwarding GET requests which is why the above code clone the entire HttpRequestMessage via the below snippet found on stack overflow:

public static class HttpRequestMessageExtensions
{
    public static async Task<HttpRequestMessage> CloneHttpRequestMessageAsync(HttpRequestMessage req)
    {
        var clone = new HttpRequestMessage(req.Method, req.RequestUri); 

        var ms = new MemoryStream();
        if (req.Content != null)
        {
            await req.Content.CopyToAsync(ms).ConfigureAwait(false);
            ms.Position = 0; 

            if ((ms.Length > 0 || req.Content.Headers.Any()) && clone.Method != HttpMethod.Get)
            {
                clone.Content = new StreamContent(ms); 

                if (req.Content.Headers != null)
                    foreach (var h in req.Content.Headers)
                        clone.Content.Headers.Add(h.Key, h.Value);
            }
        } 

        clone.Version = req.Version; 

        foreach (var prop in req.Properties)
            clone.Properties.Add(prop); 

        foreach (var header in req.Headers)
            clone.Headers.TryAddWithoutValidation(header.Key, header.Value); 

        return clone;
    }
}

I’m very impressed by the elegance of both Web API but more so the way the HttpRequestMessage/HttpResponseMessage is reused between Web API and HttpClient.

I tested the reverse proxy solutions against our current API and all our GET/POST requests went through. Furthermore all exception message was passed through the proxy as well.