Using HTTP proxy with Puppeteer
I had requirement to evaluate remote JavaScript using Headless Chrome, but requests had to be routed through an internal proxy and different proxies had to be used for different URLs. A convoluted requirement perhaps, but the last bit describes an important feature that Puppeteer is lacking: switching HTTP proxy for each Page/ Request.
However, it turns out that even if the feature is lacking, it is easy to implement an entirely custom HTTP request/ response handling using Puppeteer. All you need is:
- Enable request/ response interception using
page.setRequestInterception(true)
. - Intercept request
- Make request using Node.js
- Return response to Chrome
This way Chrome itself never makes an outgoing HTTP request and all requests can be handled using Node.js.
The basic functionality is simple to implement:
import puppeteer from 'puppeteer';
import got from 'got';
import HttpProxyAgent from 'http-proxy-agent';(async () => {
const browser = await puppeteer.launch();
const page = await browser.newPage(); // 1. Enable request/ response interception
await page.setRequestInterception(true); // 2. Intercept request
page.once('request', async (request) => {
// 3. Make request using Node.js
const response = await got(request.url(), {
// HTTP proxy.
agent: new HttpProxyAgent('http://127.0.0.1:3000'),
body: request.postData(),
headers: request.headers(),
method: request.method(),
retry: 0,
throwHttpErrors: false,
}); // 4. Return response to Chrome
await request.respond({
body: response.body,
headers: response.headers,
status: response.statusCode,
});
}); await page.goto('http://gajus.com');
})();
It gets a bit trickier if you require to support HTTPS, error and cookie handling. However, as of last night, there is a package for that: puppeteer-proxy.
puppeteer-proxy
abstracts HTTP proxy handling for Puppeteer, including HTTPS support, error and cookie handling. Using it is simple:
import puppeteer from 'puppeteer';
import {
createPageProxy,
} from 'puppeteer-proxy';(async () => {
const browser = await puppeteer.launch();
const page = await browser.newPage(); const pageProxy = createPageProxy({
page,
}); await page.setRequestInterception(true); page.once('request', async (request) => {
await pageProxy.proxyRequest({
request,
proxyUrl: 'http://127.0.0.1:3000',
});
}); await page.goto('http://gajus.com');
})();