npm-proxy-cache

HTTP/HTTPS caching proxy for work with npm utility. This is not a reverse proxy.

You may find this tool useful if you are experiencing huge network lags / latency problems. Other solutions such as local CoachDB mirror of npm registry require much more work and maintenance.

Installation

npm

npm install npm-proxy-cache -g

Docker

The docker image of this repository is not hosted on Docker Hub (yet)

To run npm-proxy-cache as a Docker container, you need to build the image first:

docker build -t npm-proxy-cache .

After building the image successfully, you can run the Docker container. To pass parameters, simply append them to the docker run command, like so:

docker run -t npm-proxy-cache --port 8080 --host 0.0.0.0 --expired

Usage

First of all, you need to configure npm to use proxy

npm config set proxy http://localhost:8080/
npm config set https-proxy http://localhost:8080/
npm config set strict-ssl false

Another way is to use it explicitly with npm install command, like this:

npm --proxy http://localhost:8080 --https-proxy http://localhost:8080 --strict-ssl false install

The strict-ssl false option is required since it's impossible to auth cached response from https proxy, which actully acts as a MITM (man in the middle). All other than GET requests are not cached, so you still be able to publish your modules to npm registry without switching cache on and off.

Once you have npm configured, start the proxy:

npm-proxy-cache

By default proxy starts on localhost:8080 and have cache ttl 30 mins. These values might be overriden using command line options:

npm-proxy-cache --help
 
  Usage: npm-proxy-cache [options]
 
  Options:
 
    -h, --host [name]       Hostname [localhost]
    -p, --port [number]     An integer argument [8080]
    -t, --ttl [seconds]     Cache lifetime in seconds [1800]
    -s, --storage [path]    Storage path
    -x, --proxy             HTTP proxy to be used, e.g. http://user:pass@example.com:8888/
    -e, --expired           Use expired cache when npm registry unavailable
    -f, --friendly-names    Use actual file names instead of hashes in the cache
    -v, --verbose           Verbose mode
    -n, --metadata-excluded Exclude metadata requests from caching
    -l, --log-path          Log path
    -m, --internal-port     HTTPs port to use for internal proxying "MITM" server (necessary for running on Windows systems)
    --help                  This help

Why can't I use the built-in npm cache?

Well, for some reason npm cache works not as expected and cache hits are low. Additionally, CI servers which run on multiply machines may utilize one cache storage which you can provide via caching proxy.

Docker

To use a docker container, run:

curl -sSL https://get.docker.com/ | sh
docker pull folha/npm-proxy-cache
docker run --restart=always --net=host -p 8080:8080 -t folha/npm-proxy-cache --name=npm-proxy-cache
npm --proxy http://npm-proxy-cache:8080 --https-proxy http://npm-proxy-cache:8080 --strict-ssl false install

Limitations

• Works only with node 0.10 and above.

Any feedback is welcome