Confusion about the Desktop UI's "Send to Host"

[jimbrig]

Why am I forced to add this if the original intercepted request on port 8080 (for example) has the auth and original unproxied destination URL etc.?

[AndrewWalsh]

Hi @jimbrig,

Good question. The main answer is that the intended use case I had in mind at the time was users proxying a local back-end to a local front-end (or another local back-end). In this case, the downstream of the request is the upstream of the proxy. The request is routed to the local upstream port (3000 here) and targets the downstream URL (http://localhost:8080).

But you're right, there are many cases such as proxies in browsers and such where only the upstream need be specified. This could be amended without difficulty. The code that uses the downstream URL is located here https://github.com/AndrewWalsh/demystify/blob/main/apps/desktop/proxy.go#L52-L57, and said code could extract the downstream from the request and drop the requirement that it be specified explicitly. The front-end code would need to be amended to drop the requirement for specifying the downstream URL https://github.com/AndrewWalsh/demystify/blob/main/apps/desktop/frontend/src/Proxy.vue#L46-L64.

As I said in another issue, I don't intend to continue this project and it's just a portfolio prop at this point. As far as I am aware, other tools exist that can do what the desktop app does specifically. Can you see if the following tool solves your use case https://www.npmjs.com/package/@useoptic/optic?