Getting node.js http-proxy to play nice with restify. This will also work for http-proxy with express or another node.js server. Note that I took various snippets of my code for this gist in order to try and convey the general idea. It won't work to just run this file.

gistfile1.js

/*
I have an existing node.js API server that runs on top of restify. I wanted to add http-proxy to forward 
some calls to another API server. From the http-proxy examples out there, it seemed simply enough:
*/

var httpProxy       = require('http-proxy');
var proxy           = new httpProxy.RoutingProxy();
var restify         = require('restify');
var server          = restify.createServer();

server.get('/foo/:bar', function(req, res) {
    proxy.proxyRequest(req, res, {
        host: 'somehost.com',
        port: 80
    });
});

/*
But there is one pretty big reason why this didn't work for me. Later on in the code I have some restify middleware code:
*/

server.use(restify.acceptParser(server.acceptable));    
server.use(restify.authorizationParser());              
server.use(restify.queryParser());                     
server.use(restify.bodyParser({ mapParams: false }));
server.use(restify.gzipResponse()); 

/*
The reason this causes a problem is that the middleware calls are modifying the request object 
in a way that prevents the ability of http-proxy to forward the request. In order for the proxy 
to work, we can't mess with the request too much. I still needed this middleware for my existing 
non-proxy API calls, so I created the following wrapper to conditionally implement each middleware: 
*/

var wrapper = function(middleware) {
    return function(req, res, next) {
        var regex = /^\/foo.*$/;
        
        // if url is a proxy request, don't do anything and move to next middleware
        if(regex.test(req.url)) {
            next();
        }
        // else invoke middleware
        else {
            // some middleware is an array (ex. bodyParser)
            if(middleware instanceof Array) {
                middleware[0](req, res, function() {
                    middleware[1](req, res, next);
                });
            }
            else {
                middleware(req, res, next);
            }
        }
    };
};

// then I wrap my middleware calls with this function:
server.use(wrapper(restify.acceptParser(server.acceptable)));
server.use(wrapper(restify.authorizationParser()));
server.use(wrapper(restify.queryParser()));           
server.use(wrapper(restify.bodyParser({ mapParams: false })));
server.use(wrapper(restify.gzipResponse())); 

/*
I will eventually make the wrapper function more generic and robust to handle other potential situations, 
but I think you get the gist.
*/

Very helpful, thank you!

jeff - any updates on this technique ?

I've used this gist. Very helpful, thanks.

Very helpful, thank you!

Webpack dev server now supports "proxy" parameter upon launch from javascript.
It works for me now.

Just introduced a proxy to a restify service and initially attempted this pattern but felt it was too intrusive.
We discovered server.pre() from restify/pre which runs before all middleware and used it to setup a proxy.

Implemented this pattern and created a gist: https://gist.github.com/hartzis/ce191533d8579afe2481ddd5e2c6024a