I am attempting to forward custom parameters to a RESTful API server and return the proxied response to the client-facing server. I don't want the client to have access to or be able to read the API HTTP request/response interactions, so I decided to perform this action using a reverse proxy. I have no problem forwarding the request and returning a response. The problem lies in the authentication. The client-facing server always wants to redirect to the login page because it doesn't believe the client is authenticated. I have tried using HTTPS and HTTP with similar results.
I have been researching this problem for quite some time and found quite a variety of answers, none of which seem to quite encompass my specific use case. I am following this example, which is the closest to what I specifically need. However, the credentials portion the author commented out (//request.Credentials = CredentialCache.DefaultCredentials;) doesn't seem to cover the authentication portion I am attempting to implement. Please help me understand this problem and solution.
Here is the code I am using from the controller:
public ActionResult ProxyEndpoint(string custom_string, string another_custom_string)
{
//Bunch of code here to grab the remoteUrl from AppConfig and do stuff to the parameters and store them in queryString, unnecessary to show here.
//Here's the important bits:
remoteUrl = remoteUrl + "?" + queryString; // create my remoteUrl
HttpWebRequest request = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create(remoteUrl);
request.Credentials = CredentialCache.DefaultCredentials;
// Also tried this to no avail:
request.Credentials = CredentialCache.DefaultNetworkCredentials;
return ProxyActionResult(request.GetResponse());
}
Here is the ProxyActionResult class:
public class ProxyActionResult : ActionResult
{
WebResponse _response;
public ProxyActionResult(WebResponse response)
{
_response = response;
}
public override void ExecuteResult(ControllerContext controllerContext)
{
HttpContextBase httpContext = controllerContext.HttpContext;
WebResponse response = _response;
// Read the byte stream from the response:
Stream responseStream = response.GetResponseStream();
// Pulled this next piece from http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/7135/Simple-HTTP-Reverse-Proxy-with-ASP-NET-and-IIS
// Seemed to fit our use case.
if ((response.ContentType.ToLower().IndexOf("html") >= 0) || (response.ContentType.ToLower().IndexOf("javascript") >= 0))// || (response.ContentType.ToLower().IndexOf("image") >= 0))
{
//If the response is HTML Content, parse it like HTML:
StreamReader readStream = new StreamReader(responseStream, Encoding.Default);
String content;
content = ParseHtmlResponse(readStream.ReadToEnd(), httpContext.Request.ApplicationPath);
//Write the updated HTML to the client(and then close the response):
httpContext.Response.Write(content);
httpContext.Response.ContentType = response.ContentType;
response.Close();
httpContext.Response.End();
}
else
{
// If the response is not HTML Content, write the stream directly to the client:
var buffer = new byte[1024];
int bytes = 0;
while ((bytes = responseStream.Read(buffer, 0, 1024)) > 0)
{
httpContext.Response.OutputStream.Write(buffer, 0, bytes);
}
// from http://www.dotnetperls.com/response-binarywrite
httpContext.Response.ContentType = response.ContentType; // Set the appropriate content type of the response stream.
// and close the stream:
response.Close();
httpContext.Response.End();
}
//throw new NotImplementedException();
}
// Debating whether we need this:
public string ParseHtmlResponse(string html, string appPath)
{
html = html.Replace("\"/", "\"" + appPath + "/");
html = html.Replace("'/", "'" + appPath + "/");
html = html.Replace("=/", "=" + appPath + "/");
return html;
}
request.Credentials = CredentialCache.DefaultCredentials;to it...