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Outway as a proxy

Introduction

Please note this is an alpha feature

The outway can run as a proxy. This allows applications to request services on NLX in the following format: http://service-name.organization-name.nlx.local. This can be useful when predictability of URLs is important, such as accessing linked data.

Configuration

To use the outway as a proxy you need to:

  • Start the outway as a proxy
  • Configure your http client to use the outway as a proxy

Start the outway as a proxy

You can start the outway as a proxy by setting the environment variable USE_AS_HTTP_PROXY to 1 when starting the outway docker image.

In this example the command to start the outway used in the try nlx section has been modified to start the outway as a proxy:

docker run --rm \
--name my-nlx-outway \
--volume ~/nlx-setup/root.crt:/certs/root.crt:ro \
--volume ~/nlx-setup/org.crt:/certs/org.crt:ro \
--volume ~/nlx-setup/org.key:/certs/org.key:ro \
--env DIRECTORY_ADDRESS=directory-api.demo.nlx.io:443 \
--env TLS_NLX_ROOT_CERT=/certs/root.crt \
--env TLS_ORG_CERT=/certs/org.crt \
--env TLS_ORG_KEY=/certs/org.key \
--env DISABLE_LOGDB=1 \
--env USE_AS_HTTP_PROXY=1 \
--publish 80:8080 \
nlxio/outway:latest

Configure your http client

The HTTP client you will use to address the outway needs to be configured to use the outway as a proxy. This can be done by setting the environment variable http_proxy to the address of your outway. If the http client you use does not respect the http_proxy variable, please review the documentation of the http client on how to configure it to use a proxy.

Set the environment variable http_proxy:

export http_proxy=http://{outway-ip}

Using the outway as a proxy.

To address a service on the NLX network the URL should have to following structure: http://service.organization.services.nlx.local

For example, to query the RvRD demo API use:

curl http://basisregistratie.rvrd.service.nlx.local/natuurlijke_personen/da02ca58-4412-11e9-b210-d663bd873d93

If the URL does not contain service.nlx.local, the request will not be routed through the NLX network but through the public internet. Calls routed through the public internet will not be logged in the transaction log of the outway.