TechnoClippings

I needed an http proxy for another project (more on that later) and thought it would be fun to write one in ruby. How simple can it be? With a few compromises, it can be very short indeed:

# tinyproxy.rb
# just for the fun of it

require 'socket'
require 'http-access2'

def process_request(conn)
  verb, uri, protocol = conn.gets.split
  puts uri
  http = HTTPAccess2::Client.new()
  resp = http.get(uri)
  while HTTP::Status.redirect?(resp.status)
    puts "redirect"
    resp = http.get(resp.header['location'][0])
  end
  conn.puts resp.content
  conn.close
end

server = TCPServer.new('localhost', 4567)
while (conn = server.accept) do
  Thread.new(conn) do |c|
    process_request(c)
  end
end

I’m cheating in a couple places. I’m only handling GET requests, and I’m using Hiroshi Nakamura’s excellent http-access2 package.

On the other hand, it’s multi-threaded and it handles redirects, a must for the web.

Tags: ruby, http, httpproxy