What is NPM?
What is Node NPM Proxy Authentication?
Node NPM Proxy Authentication is a procedure used to authorize user access and carry out operations in Node’s package manager (NPM) via a proxy server. A proxy server adds an extra layer of security between your server and the outside network. When working behind a proxy, there might be a need to authenticate the request to the proxy before any operation is carried out.
In the context of Node.js and NPM, proxy authentication is used when installing npm packages, updating versions, or performing other tasks that require direct interaction with the external npm repository, especially for large organizations in a secure intranet environment.
You specify the proxy server details (username and password) in your NPM configuration settings. Typically, this is done through the command line using `npm config set` command. NPM then uses these settings to route all requests through the specified proxy with the provided credentials.
This approach ensures secure, efficient, and controlled access to the internet, enabling programmers to interact securely with the NPM registry and other online resources that may be available only through a proxy. Remember that it’s important to keep your proxy credentials secure, as they can provide unrestricted internet access if leaked.
Why Node.js?
So first, why do we recommend Node.js for web scraping? To answer that, let us talk about what exactly is Node.js and what are its advantages over other programming languages.
Node.js is an open-source, JavaScript runtime environment that can be used outside a web browser. Basically, the creators of Node.js took JavaScript which is mostly restricted to a web browser and allow it to run on your personal computer. With the help of Google chrome’s v8 engine, we are now able to run Javascript on our local machine which enables us to access files, listen to network traffic, and even listen to HTTP requests your machine gets and send back a file. Database can also be accessed directly much like anything you can do with PHP or Ruby on Rails.
Processing speed – Node.js is very fast, mainly thanks to Chrome’s v8 engine. Instead of using an interpreter, it uses an engine to compile JavaScript into machine code. Performance is further improved by handling concurrent requests using the event loop only in a single thread. Because it is modeled for non-blocking I/O, it reduces CPU usage when processing multiple requests at the same time.
Lightweight and highly scalable – It can handle growing workloads and perform well, making it affordable for most developers. Node.js makes it easy to update and maintain applications by decoupling each part as you add new architectures or even fix existing ones, without changing or customizing other parts of the project or application. On the development side, it is also possible to reuse and share code through modules like individual code blocks.
Node NPM Node.js Proxy Authentication
Open terminal/cmd as an administrator and paste the command there. Modify the command with credentials provided for your user:
npm config set proxy http://"username:password"@your.proxy.ip:9000
npm config set https-proxy http://"username:password"@your.proxy.ip:9000This method can be used if you want to specify their proxy server address and port number, and type their username and password.
Node v8 and v14 Proxy Authentication
Node v8 proxy using HTTP tunnel:
const http = require('http')
const https = require('https')
const username = 'username'
const password = 'password'
const auth = 'Basic ' + Buffer.from(username + ':' + password).toString('base64')
http.request({
host: '255.255.255.255', // IP address of proxy server
port: 9000, // port of proxy server
method: 'CONNECT',
path: 'google.com:443', // some destination, add 443 port for https!
headers: {
'Proxy-Authorization': auth
},
}).on('connect', (res, socket) => {
if (res.statusCode === 200) { // connected to proxy server
https.get({
host: 'www.google.com',
socket: socket, // using a tunnel
agent: false, // cannot use a default agent
path: '/your/url' // specify path to get from server
}, (res) => {
let chunks = []
res.on('data', chunk => chunks.push(chunk))
res.on('end', () => {
console.log('DONE', Buffer.concat(chunks).toString('utf8'))
})
})
}
}).on('error', (err) => {
console.error('error', err)
}).end()Node v14 proxy example:
const http = require('http');
const https = require('https');
const username = 'username';
const password = 'password';
const auth = 'Basic ' + Buffer.from(username + ':' + password).toString('base64');
http.request({
host: '255.255.255.255', // IP address of proxy server
port: 9000, // port of proxy server
method: 'CONNECT',
path: 'google.com:443', // some destination, add 443 port for https!
headers: {
'Proxy-Authorization': auth
},
}).on('connect', (res, socket) => {
if (res.statusCode === 200) { // connected to proxy server
const agent = new https.Agent({ socket });
https.get({
host: 'www.google.com',
path: '/',
agent, // cannot use a default agent
}, (res) => {
let chunks = []
res.on('data', chunk => chunks.push(chunk))
res.on('end', () => {
console.log('DONE', Buffer.concat(chunks).toString('utf8'))
})
})
}
}).on('error', (err) => {
console.error('error', err)
}).end(); TL;DR
NPM is a critical repository for the publishing and management of open-source Node.js projects. Leveraging the speed and versatility of Node.js, web-scraping tasks can be implemented in JavaScript outside of a web browser environment. Node.js offers an open-source runtime environment which, with the help of Google Chrome’s v8 engine, enables the practice to run Javascript directly on local machines, allowing access to files, network traffic, HTTP requests, and databases.
For proxy server access, Node.js supports NPM Proxy Authentication, allowing users to easily set Node.js to utilize a proxy server with user-provided credentials through command-line commands. This article shows examples of how to authenticate a proxy server for versions 8 and 14 of Node.js, using the http and https modules, and Basic Authorization.
Node.js is highly preferred for its quick processing speed, scalability, and cost effectiveness made possible by expansive libraries and applications published on the NPM. These make it an optimal tool for handling tasks such as API querying, data scraping, content analysis, and monitoring.
