robanderton / java-fixie-https-demo

A simple example app showing how to use preemptive authentication when proxying HTTPs traffic via Fixie in Java.

Java/Fixie HTTPS Demo

A simple example app showing how to use preemptive authentication when proxying HTTPs traffic via Fixie in Java.

About the demo

The Fixie Heroku add-on provides the ability for apps to route their outbound requests via a static IP. It does this by providing a proxy server that is compatible with both HTTP and tunneled HTTPS traffic.

When using Java with the Apache HTTP Client package, it is necessary to configure the library to perform preemptive authentication with the proxy.

Unfortunately, finding a fully working, up-to-date example that works with both HTTP and HTTPS is near impossible! Many of them will fail with an org.apache.http.NoHttpResponseException error.

The cause of the problem can be seen when examining the log output from the Apache HTTP client, for example:

DefaultHttpClientConnectionOperator - Connecting to velodrome.usefixie.com/52.202.116.113:80
DefaultHttpClientConnectionOperator - Connection established 192.168.1.32:52606<->52.202.116.113:80
headers - http-outgoing-0 >> CONNECT httpbin.org:443 HTTP/1.1
headers - http-outgoing-0 >> Host: httpbin.org:443
headers - http-outgoing-0 >> User-Agent: Apache-HttpClient/4.5.1 (Java/1.8.0_102)
DefaultManagedHttpClientConnection - http-outgoing-0: Close connection
DefaultManagedHttpClientConnection - http-outgoing-0: Shutdown connection
MainClientExec - Connection discarded

As this shows, when the attempt to CONNECT to the remote server is made, the Proxy-Authorization header that is needed to authenticate to Fixie, is not sent. Fixie immediately closes the connection, and no response is returned.

This demo app shows how the HttpClientContext class can be used to store preemptive authentication information and generate the correct Proxy-Authorization header for the Fixie proxy.

A sample of the log output from this app is shown below: note that it includes the correct header and therefore a tunnel via Fixie is successfully established.

DefaultHttpClientConnectionOperator - Connecting to velodrome.usefixie.com/52.202.116.113:80
DefaultHttpClientConnectionOperator - Connection established 192.168.1.32:53629<->52.202.116.113:80
headers - http-outgoing-0 >> CONNECT httpbin.org:443 HTTP/1.1
headers - http-outgoing-0 >> Host: httpbin.org:443
headers - http-outgoing-0 >> User-Agent: Apache-HttpClient/4.5.1 (Java/1.8.0_102)
headers - http-outgoing-0 >> Proxy-Authorization: Basic Zml4aWU6RzdCeE12V1ZYWHNLSUk2
headers - http-outgoing-0 << HTTP/1.0 200 OK
HttpAuthenticator - Authentication succeeded
ProxyAuthenticationStrategy - Caching 'basic' auth scheme for http://velodrome.usefixie.com:80
MainClientExec - Tunnel to target created.

Note: the code demonstrated in this app will also work for HTTP requests.

The code itself lives in the showHttps function in src/main/java/Main.java and it shows how to authenticate to the proxy and send a HTTPS request to https://httpbin.org/ip. When you run the run the demo app and click the link, you should see one of your Fixie IP addresses reported back.

Dependencies

This demo has been built using version 4.5.2 of the Apache HTTP Client. If you are attempting to use a newer version and receiving errors, please create an issue.

The demo code will not work with older versions of the package!

Running locally

Make sure you have Java and Maven installed along with the Heroku Toolbelt.

$ git clone https://github.com/robanderton/java-fixie-https-demo.git
$ cd java-fixie-https-demo
$ mvn install
$ heroku local:start

The app should now be running on localhost:5000.

Note: you will need to configure a .env file containing a FIXIE_URL value in order to run locally. See the Fixie Local Setup documentation for more information.

Deploying to Heroku

$ heroku create
$ heroku addons:create fixie:tricycle
$ git push heroku master
$ heroku open

Thanks

Thanks to Sarb Billing for providing the fully working example that is the basis for this demo app.

Thanks also to Joe Kutner for the proxy-examples app that I hacked around with when trying to get HTTPS to work.

And finally, the contributors to this Stack Overflow discussion that helped immensely.