Setup proxy server with Express

The problem:

I am working on a project using BreweryDB. I was trying to load some data from the API, but they don’t support jsonp. There is a CORS issue if I directly fetch data using Angular:

XMLHttpRequest cannot load [https://api.brewerydb.com/v2/.](https://api.brewerydb.com/v2/.) No 'Access-Control-Allow-Origin' header is present on the requested resource. Origin 'http://localhost:3000' is therefore not allowed access.

My solution:

I don’t want to expose my API key, so I have to setup an intermediate proxy. The following code illustrates step by step on how to setup a proxy using node/express.

Step 1: Install express and request

npm install express --save npm install request --save

Step 2: Create server.js

var express = require('express'); 
var request = require('request'); 
var app = express();

Step 3: Setup the route (replace API_KEY with your API key)

app.get('/api', function(req, res){ 
  request('https://api.brewerydb.com/v2/?key=' + API_KEY, function (error, response, body) { 
    if (!error && response.statusCode === 200) { 
      console.log(body); 
      res.send(body); 
    } 
   }); 
});

Step 4: Setup the port

app.listen(3000); 
console.log('Server running on port %d', 3000);

Step 5: Start the server (node server.js)

Open your browser at http://localhost:3000/api, you should be able the get the JSON object and log in your browser console:

"message":"Request Successful", 
"data":"You have reached the BreweryDB.com API. For access, check out http:\/\/www.brewerydb.com\/developers", 
"status":"success"

Send me an email if you have any problem ☺

Originally published at victorleungtw.com on December 27, 2014.