Pluggable Client Transports / HTTP(S) proxy Support

The client side infrastructure has (unstable) support to plug different transport mechanisms underneath. A client side transport is represented by an instance of akka.http.scaladsl.ClientTransportakka.http.javadsl.ClientTransport:

Scala

@ApiMayChange
trait ClientTransport {
  def connectTo(host: String, port: Int, settings: ClientConnectionSettings)(implicit system: ActorSystem): Flow[ByteString, ByteString, Future[OutgoingConnection]]
}

Java

@ApiMayChange
abstract class ClientTransport {
  def connectTo(host: String, port: Int, settings: ClientConnectionSettings, system: ActorSystem): Flow[ByteString, ByteString, CompletionStage[OutgoingConnection]]
}

A transport implementation defines how the client infrastructure should communicate with a given host.

Configuring Client Transports

A ClientTransportClientTransport is configured slightly differently for the various layers of the HTTP client. Right now, configuration is only possible with code (and not through config files). There’s currently no predefined way that would allow you to select different transports per target host (but you can easily define any kind of strategy by implementing ClientTransportClientTransport yourself).

Connection Pool Usage

The ConnectionPoolSettingsConnectionPoolSettings class allows setting a custom transport for any of the pool methods. Use ConnectionPoolSettings.withTransport to configure a transport and pass those settings to one of the pool methods like Http().singleRequest, Http().superPool, or Http().cachedHostConnectionPool Http.get(...).singleRequest, Http.get(...).superPool, or Http.get(...).cachedHostConnectionPool.

Single Connection Usage

You can configure a custom transport for a single HTTP connection by passing it to the Http().outgoingConnectionUsingTransport method.

Predefined Transports

TCP

The default transport is ClientTransport.TCP which simply opens a TCP connection to the target host.

HTTP(S) Proxy

A transport that connects to target servers via an HTTP(S) proxy. An HTTP(S) proxy uses the HTTP CONNECT method (as specified in RFC 7231 Section 4.3.6) to create tunnels to target servers. The proxy itself should transparently forward data to the target servers so that end-to-end encryption should still work (if TLS breaks, then the proxy might be fussing with your data).

This approach is commonly used to securely proxy requests to HTTPS endpoints. In theory it could also be used to proxy requests targeting HTTP endpoints, but we have not yet found a proxy that in fact allows this.

Instantiate the HTTP(S) proxy transport using ClientTransport.httpsProxy(proxyAddress).

Use HTTP(S) proxy with Http().singleRequestHttp.get(...).singleRequest

To make use of an HTTP proxy when using the singleRequest API you simply need to configure the proxy and pass the apropriate settings object when calling the single request method.

Scala

import java.net.InetSocketAddress

import akka.actor.ActorSystem
import akka.stream.ActorMaterializer
import akka.http.scaladsl.{ ClientTransport, Http }

implicit val system = ActorSystem()
implicit val materializer = ActorMaterializer()

val proxyHost = "localhost"
val proxyPort = 8888

val httpsProxyTransport = ClientTransport.httpsProxy(InetSocketAddress.createUnresolved(proxyHost, proxyPort))

val settings = ConnectionPoolSettings(system).withTransport(httpsProxyTransport)
Http().singleRequest(HttpRequest(uri = "https://google.com"), settings = settings)

Java

final ActorSystem system = ActorSystem.create();

ClientTransport proxy = ClientTransport.httpsProxy(InetSocketAddress.createUnresolved("192.168.2.5", 8080));
ConnectionPoolSettings poolSettingsWithHttpsProxy = ConnectionPoolSettings.create(system).withTransport(proxy);

final CompletionStage<HttpResponse> responseFuture =
    Http.get(system)
        .singleRequest(
              HttpRequest.create("https://github.com"),
              Http.get(system).defaultClientHttpsContext(),
              poolSettingsWithHttpsProxy, // <- pass in the custom settings here
              system.log());

Use HTTP(S) proxy that requires authentication

In order to use a HTTP(S) proxy that requires authentication, you need to provide HttpCredentialsHttpCredentials that will be used when making the CONNECT request to the proxy:

Scala

import akka.http.scaladsl.model.headers

val proxyAddress = InetSocketAddress.createUnresolved(proxyHost, proxyPort)
val auth = headers.BasicHttpCredentials("proxy-user", "secret-proxy-pass-dont-tell-anyone")

val httpsProxyTransport = ClientTransport.httpsProxy(proxyAddress, auth)

val settings = ConnectionPoolSettings(system).withTransport(httpsProxyTransport)
Http().singleRequest(HttpRequest(uri = "https://akka.io"), settings = settings)

Java

InetSocketAddress proxyAddress =
  InetSocketAddress.createUnresolved("192.168.2.5", 8080);
HttpCredentials credentials =
  HttpCredentials.createBasicHttpCredentials("proxy-user", "secret-proxy-pass-dont-tell-anyone");

ClientTransport proxy = ClientTransport.httpsProxy(proxyAddress, credentials); // include credentials
ConnectionPoolSettings poolSettingsWithHttpsProxy = ConnectionPoolSettings.create(system).withTransport(proxy);

final CompletionStage<HttpResponse> responseFuture =
    Http.get(system)
        .singleRequest(
              HttpRequest.create("https://github.com"),
              Http.get(system).defaultClientHttpsContext(),
              poolSettingsWithHttpsProxy, // <- pass in the custom settings here
              system.log());

Implementing Custom Transports

Implement ClientTransport.connectTo to implement a custom client transport.

Here are some ideas for custom (or future predefined) transports:

• SSH tunnel transport: connects to the target host through an SSH tunnel
• Per-host configurable transport: allows choosing transports per target host