node-http-auth-proxy - authenticate HTTP requests against another server

Installation and configuration

• the proxy was developed with node v0.2.5, download it from http://nodejs.org/
• to use the proxy you have to install all required dependencies via make dependencies
• copy settings.json.example to settings.json, then edit the configuration of the proxy.
• then run the server via make or node runner.js

Authentication

• to validate the authenticity of a request the proxy searches for the configured cookie. If the cookie can be found is gets checked for manipulation or if the session timed out.
• if the cookie is invalid or if there is no proxy at all the proxy redirects the user to the configured authentication server. The authentication server then validates the current user in some way or another and finally returns the user back to the proxy server to execute the original request.
• the redirection request from the authentication server to the proxy contains a magic token and the user's email address. Both values have to be sent as GET parameters with the names configured in the settings.json. You will find an example authentication server in the file authserver.js.
• the email address of the authenticated user will be forwarded to the server secured by the proxy by the means of an additional HTTP request header, 'x-auth-proxy-username'. The destination server might react by filtering or modifying its response to the request depending on which user was authenticated by the proxy.

Exceptions

• the proxy allows to configuration URL paths which shouldn't be authenticated. To do so there is the exceptions configuration option. The option is a list of regular expressions to be matched against the requested URL for each request: "exceptions": [ "^/api.php", "^/icons/(.*)" ]