About node-image-proxy

An image proxy written in node.js with a Redis backend, Ready to run on cloud services like CloudFoundry.

What Is This For?

I use posterous to update my blog from iPhone (which is much easier than WordPress's offical client), but the images from posterous are blocked in mainland China by the GFW. This image proxy can by-pass the block by sending the images from your own server.

Why Redis?

node-image-proxy caches not only the image, but also the headers send from the original server. Redis's hset/hget commands can save easily both of them as a set. It's schema-less!

What Else?

I also included 3 demos in this project.

• examples/image\_http.js - download a file using node's stand http module.
• examples/image\_request.js - download a file using request and save it to Redis.
• examples/image\_recover.js - recover a file from Redis to disk.

Installation

You need to add a simple Javascript to your blog, which let the blocked images be proxied. I wrote a jQuery plugin for that (public/imgProxy.js), but it's very simple and you can rewrite it using whatever you like.

  (function($) {
    $.fn.imgProxy = function(options) {
      var settings = {
        "api-root" : "http://img.yourserver.com/u/"
      };
      if (options) {
        $.extend(settings, options);
      }

      this.each(function() {
        var element = $(this);
        if (this.tagName.toLowerCase() == "img" && element.attr("src")) {
          element.attr("src", settings["api-root"] + encodeURIComponent(element.attr("src")));
        }
      });
    };
  })(jQuery);


  $ = jQuery;
  $(document).ready(function(){
    $(".posterous_autopost img").imgProxy();
  });

Install On Cloud Foundry

Here is the how to install it on Cloud Foundry:

  gem install vmc
  vmc target api.cloudfoundry.com
  vmc login # if you've got the invitation, it's in your mail
  vmc push your_app
  vmc env-add your_app NODE_ENV=production

  # update your app
  vmc update your_app

  # check status/logs
  vmc stats your_app
  vmc logs your_app