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Simple API Proxy

This is a very basic API proxy that adds relaxed CORS headers to API calls. This allows easier use of direct API calls in web browser javascript.

It also hides HTTP Authorization header credentials and tokens to keep them out of that javascript.

Usage

Configuration is set via environment variables. For example:

LISTEN=localhost \
PORT=8787 \
API_BASE=https://docs.getgrist.com/api \
AUTHORIZATION="Bearer 16274320ba0fd00dee589af6ebd21d5c664b0e3e" \
./bin/apiproxy

The following environment variables are available:

LISTEN - The network address to listen on. Defaults to 0.0.0.0 if not set. Set this to localhost for testing or local development.

PORT - The port to listen on. Defaults to 8787.

API_BASE - The base URL of the upstream API server, e.g. https://example.com/api or https://api.example.net.

AUTHORIZATION - The Authorization header value for the API server, e.g. Bearer 16274320ba0fd00dee589af6ebd21d5c664b0e3e or Basic dXNlcjpwYXNz

Container image

A container image for apiproxy is available at ghcr.io/freethoughtdesign/apiproxy, so this example will also work:

docker run --name apiproxy --rm -d \
  -p 8787:8787 \
  -e API_BASE=https://docs.getgrist.com/api \
  -e AUTHORIZATION="Bearer 16274320ba0fd00dee589af6ebd21d5c664b0e3e" \
  ghcr.io/freethoughtdesign/apiproxy:latest

Or in a compose.yml if using Docker Compose:

services:
  apiproxy:
    image: ghcr.io/freethoughtdesign/apiproxy:latest
    ports:
      - 8787:8787
    environment:
      API_BASE: https://docs.getgrist.com/api
      AUTHORIZATION: "Bearer 16274320ba0fd00dee589af6ebd21d5c664b0e3e"

Building

go build -o ./bin/apiproxy main.go

Development

You can quickly test during development with a command like this:

LISTEN=localhost PORT=8787 API_BASE=https://docs.getgrist.com/api AUTHORIZATION="Bearer 16274320ba0fd00dee589af6ebd21d5c664b0e3e" go run main.go

You can also use Docker Compose to build and run the container from the compose.yml file in this repo. Copy .env.example to .env and modify it. Then run:

docker compose up --build -d

Example

Let's say you were trying to use this REST API endpoint from a client-side, single-page javascript application:

https://docs.getgrist.com/api/docs/t00TDwkP4gQ3/tables/Locations/records

But the API service doesn't support direct use from browser javascript, and even if it did, you would have to include the Authorization: Bearer token in javascript code which would reveal it to anyone who looked at the source code.

You could instead run the proxy like so:

API_BASE=https://docs.getgrist.com/api AUTHORIZATION="Bearer 16274320ba0fd00dee589af6ebd21d5c664b0e3e" ./bin/apiproxy

And access the API via:

http://localhost:8787/docs/t00TDwkP4gQ3/tables/Locations/records

Because this proxy adds CORS headers, you could then call the API in client-side javascript:

async function getData() {
  const url = "http://localhost:8787/docs/t00TDwkP4gQ3/tables/Locations/records";

  try {
    const response = await fetch(url);
    if (!response.ok) {
      throw new Error(`Response status: ${response.status}`);
    }

    const json = await response.json();
    console.log(json);
  } catch (error) {
    console.error(error.message);
  }
}

Acknowledgements