ArangoDB Web Interface Behind Node.js Reverse Proxy - Cannot Connect

Question

I have a Node.js back end that I am using for authentication and for reverse proxy of an ArangoDB Web Interface. I cannot for the life of me figure out why I am unable to log into the Web Interface using my external URL.

I have searched high and low (google, stack overflow, arangodb git issues threads, arangodb app code, etc.), and cannot figure it out. I am not beholden to the node-http-proxy module I am using below. If someone has done this inside of node another way.

I have seen examples using nginx, etc. but I am really trying to keep everything under the node back end to be able to keep the proxy access behind my site authentication so I don't expose the Web Interface to random access.

I am hoping someone who has cleared this hurdle can help.

Issue: The _open/auth request is never responded to. I can still access http://localhost:8529 from the server and login in just fine.

Desired outcome: Access web interface from http://example.com:8080/_db/_system/_admin/aardvark/index.html#login and successfully login.

[Chrome Headers Network Details]:

Request URL: http://example.com:8080/_db/_system/_open/auth
Referrer Policy: no-referrer-when-downgrade

Request Headers:
Provisional headers are shown
Accept: application/json, text/javascript, */*; q=0.01
Authorization: bearer null
Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded; charset=UTF-8
Origin: http://example.com:8080
Referer: http://example.com:8080/_db/_system/_admin/aardvark/index.html
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/73.0.3683.86 Safari/537.36
X-Requested-With: XMLHttpRequest

Form Data:
{"username":"username","password":"password"}: 

Interestingly: http://127.0.0.1:8080/_db/_system/_admin/aardvark/foxxes/fishbowl always come up with a 401 error (even on the server on the localhost address and port, think it's a bug with aardvark.js)

See below configuration files.

[routes.js]:

// =====================================
// ArangoDB Web interface ============
// =====================================
var httpProxy = require('http-proxy');
var proxy = httpProxy.createProxyServer({followRedirects: true});

// set headers location overwrite per arangodb documentation
proxy.on('proxyReq', function(proxyReq, req, res, options) { 
    proxyReq.setHeader('X-Script-Name', 'http://example.com:8080');
});

proxy.on('error', function(e) {
    console.log(e);
});

app.all('*/_db/*', function(req, res) {
    proxy.web(req, res, {target: 'http://localhost:8529'});
});

[/etc/arangodb3/arangod.conf]:

[frontend]
proxy-request-check=false
version-check=false
[http]
trusted-origin=all
allow-method-override=true

Note: I have also tried 'trusted-origin=*' (Not sure which one is correct)

Answer 1

Solved

Hopefully this helps someone else out!!!

I completely missed the fact that you have to manually pass forward post data from forms to the proxy (thought it would do this automatically). Plus node/arango did something weird when you fetched the post body and append a :"" to the end of the value. So you have to manually remove it.

// =====================================
// ArangoDB query interface Route ========
// =====================================
// Add the following to the arangodb config file /etc/arangodb3/arangodb.conf
// [frontend]
// proxy-request-check = false
// [http]
// trusted-origin = *
// trusted-origin = all

// Create the proxy
var httpProxy = require('http-proxy');
var proxy = httpProxy.createProxyServer();

// Catch requests, massage the login form json, and pass along to the proxied server
proxy.on('proxyReq', function(proxyReq, req, res, options) {
    var bodyData;
    var contentType = proxyReq.getHeader('Content-Type');

    if (!req.body || !Object.keys(req.body).length) {
        return;
    };
    if (contentType == 'application/json; charset=UTF-8' || contentType == 'application/json') {
        bodyData = JSON.stringify(req.body);
    };

    if (contentType == 'application/x-www-form-urlencoded; charset=UTF-8' || contentType == 'application/x-www-form-urlencoded') {
        bodyData = queryString.stringify(req.body);
    };

    // handle formatting issue with arangodb web form where it appends a :"" to the end of the credentials (i.e. {"username","root","password","password"}:"")
    if (bodyData) {
        if (req.url.substr(-23) == '/_db/_system/_open/auth') {
            proxyReq.write(String(Object.keys(req.body)[0]))
        } else {
            proxyReq.write(bodyData);
            proxyReq.end();
        };
    };
});

  proxy.on('error', function(e) {
      console.log(e);
  });

  // note I have two functions to ensure that a user is logged in and has a specific role before they can login to the database. Insert authentication functions / middleware before the function(req, res) below
  app.all('*/_db/*', function(req, res) { //, isLoggedIn, inRole('admin')
      proxy.web(req, res, {target: 'http://127.0.0.1:8529'});
  });