Xtend Overview

This is a basic connect module that will rewrite html & js so that it can be served from a different domain. For example, you can proxy maps.google.com to run under maps.yourdomain.com. It works by rewriting all urls to originate from yourdomain.com, and all requests to maps.google.com would route through yourdomain.com.

This module is not yet ready for public release (so you can't npm install it yet). But you are more than welcome to give it a run if you can figure out how to install it.

Basics:

First, forward your local ports 80 & 443 to 3000 and 3443 respectively like this:

ipfw add 100 fwd 127.0.0.1,3000 tcp from any to me 80
ipfw add 101 fwd 127.0.0.1,3443 tcp from any to me 443

See this guide on making self-signed ssl certs always trust:

http://www.robpeck.com/2010/10/google-chrome-mac-os-x-and-self-signed-ssl-certificates/

Type this to start the proxy server:

cake run

One can access a site via *.myapp.dev via the following heuristic: A url like www.google.com becomes www-google-com.myapp.dev in our system.

app.coffee

Express server that has 2 routes: '/x_t_n_d/:name' and '*'. The first route is used to serve up the client side js that contains all the rewriters & parsers, the second is for the actual proxying.

The proxy serves up a response by piping it through ProxyStream from node-request. ProxyStream will be the candidate for dealing with headers & cookies, it currently messes with html & js and does a passthrough when the content is binary.

browser.coffee

This is the entry point for modul8 for converting all client-side js into a single file. Here we will initialize parameters specific to the browser client.

property_tester.coffee

This is mainly a utility script for testing strings of values against a set of predefined property sets. Basically we use this to determine if a method/attribute requires processing.

util.coffee

Contains a bunch of shared code that doesn't belong anywhere else.

dns_server.coffee

Primary used for development mode. One should create a file called 'dev' inside of /etc/resolver/ that should contain the following:

nameserver 127.0.0.1

This will allow the wildcard dns, *.myapp.dev, to resolve to localhost.

guide.coffee

The JS rewrite rules are contained in here. The idea is to use this in the future as the central place for all html & js rewrite rules & substitutions. It should be a small file so that it's easy to understand.

html.coffee

Rewriter for html. This defines the handler used by htmlparser 1.x

html.coffee

Rewriter for html. This defines the handler used by htmlparser 2.x

js.coffee

This is the Caja equivalence for rewriting js using a DSL.

proxy_stream.coffee

This is used by app.coffee for filtering data from the remote machine.

xtnd.coffee

This is where all the work needs to be done. The JS rewriter would convert code that depends on the functions in this file. It contains the url conversions & property modifications. Lots of stuff to be added here soon.

files inside of client/

These are equivalent npm package files that are only served up by the client, inside the browser. They are packaged by the modul8 system.