http2udp

Forwards HTTP requests to UDP sockets.

• What's the point?
• How does it work?
• How do I install it?
• How do I use it?
  • From the command line
  • From a Node.js project
• Is there a change log?
• How do I set up the build environment?
• What license is it released under?

What's the point?

At the time of writing, there is no way to send UDP packets from client-side JavaScript running in a web browser. That might seem a strange thing to want to do, but I do have a legitimate use case (I think).

UDP is a common protocol choice for monitoring systems, where the issues of dropped packets and preserving transmission order are typically of lesser importance than the ability to log large numbers of events with minimal overhead. In my case, I need to send client-side RUM data to a UDP monitoring server, but crucially the pages that I am monitoring are being served by a number of different back-end platforms.

Rather than adding a monitoring endpoint to every back-end, it is far simpler for me to create a separate server that can act as a unified proxy, reponsible for sending all of my monitoring data over UDP.

How does it work?

http2udp is a very basic HTTP server that runs on Node.js and forwards requests to UDP sockets, based on the parameters of the request.

How do I install it?

Assuming that you already have Node.js and npm, you can install it globally like so:

sudo npm install -g http2udp

Or add it to your project's dependencies in package.json and run:

npm install

How do I use it?

From the command line

To see a list of command line options, you can run:

http2udp --help

Available options are:

• --host <hostname>: Hostname to accept HTTP connections on. The default is 0.0.0.0 (INADDR_ANY).

• --port <port>: Port to accept HTTP connections on. The default is 8008.

• --path <path>: URL path to accept requests to. The default is /udp.

• --origin <origin>: Allowed origin(s) for cross-domain requests, comma separated. The default is *, specify null to force same origin.

• --maxSize <characters>: Maximum request body size in characters. The default is 1024.

• --silent: Prevent the command from logging output to the console.

If the server is running in the foreground, you can terminate it with ^C.

If it is running in the background, find the pid with ps and kill -9 it, or just killall http2udp.

From a Node.js project

var http2udp = require('http2udp');
 
http2udp.listen({
    host: '127.0.0.1',            // Defaults to '0.0.0.0' (INADDR_ANY)
    port: 80,                     // Defaults to 8008
    path: '/foo/bar',             // Defaults to '/udp'
    origin: 'http://example.com', // Defaults to '*', may be an array or null
    maxSize: 1048576              // Defaults to 1024
    log: console.log              // Defaults to `function () {}`
});

Is there a change log?

Yes.

How do I set up the build environment?

To install dependencies:

npm install

To lint the code:

npm run lint

To run the unit tests:

npm test

What license is it released under?

MIT