auth-http-server: a simple static HTTP server with authentication

auth-http-server is a fork of http-server. This fork is a simple, command-line static HTTP server, with a supabase-based authentication extension.

As the original, it is powerful enough for production usage, but it's simple and hackable enough to be used for testing, local development and learning.

Supabase Setup

auth-http-server supports role based access to the server. For this to work, the included PosgreSQL database needs the tables user_roles and roles.

The default role is called docs_reader, which the server validates by default if not specified otherwise.

Roles which should be checked can be specified like so: --roles 'docs_reader, docs_writer'.
Note: Only one of the specified roles must match for the user to be allowed to access.

Execute this setup script to setup the tables with RLS enabled and the required policies:

Show PostgreSQL setup-script

create table if not exists roles
(
    id             uuid                     default gen_random_uuid()                not null
    primary key,
    created_at_utc timestamp with time zone default (now() AT TIME ZONE 'utc'::text) not null,
    name           text                                                              not null
    unique,
    description    text
);

alter table roles
owner to postgres;

grant delete, insert, references, select, trigger, truncate, update on roles to anon;

grant delete, insert, references, select, trigger, truncate, update on roles to authenticated;

grant delete, insert, references, select, trigger, truncate, update on roles to service_role;

ALTER TABLE roles ENABLE ROW LEVEL SECURITY;

INSERT INTO public.roles (name, description) VALUES ('docs_reader', 'The user has read access to all documentations with authentication based on this Supabase project.');

create table if not exists user_roles
(
    user_id        uuid                                                              not null
    references auth.users
    on update restrict on delete cascade,
    role_id        uuid                     default gen_random_uuid()                not null
    references roles
    on update restrict on delete cascade,
    granted_at_utc timestamp with time zone default (now() AT TIME ZONE 'utc'::text) not null,
    primary key (user_id, role_id)
);

alter table user_roles
owner to postgres;

grant delete, insert, references, select, trigger, truncate, update on user_roles to anon;

grant delete, insert, references, select, trigger, truncate, update on user_roles to authenticated;

grant delete, insert, references, select, trigger, truncate, update on user_roles to service_role;

ALTER TABLE user_roles ENABLE ROW LEVEL SECURITY;

create policy user_can_select_own_grants on user_roles
as permissive
for select
to authenticated
using ((SELECT auth.uid() AS uid) = user_id);

create policy user_can_select_granted_roles on roles
as permissive
for select
to authenticated
using (EXISTS (SELECT 1
FROM user_roles
WHERE ((user_roles.role_id = roles.id) AND (user_roles.user_id = auth.uid()))));

Installation:

Running on-demand:

Using npx you can run the script without installing it first:

npx auth-http-server [path] --supabaseUrl [url] --supabaseKey [anonKey] [options] 

Globally via npm

npm install --global auth-http-server

This will install auth-http-server globally so that it may be run from the command line anywhere.

Globally via Homebrew

brew install auth-http-server

As a dependency in your npm package:

npm install auth-http-server

Usage:

 auth-http-server [path] --supabaseUrl [url] --supabaseKey [anonKey] [options] 

[path] defaults to ./public if the folder exists, and ./ otherwise.

Now you can visit http://localhost:8080 to view your server

Note: Caching is on by default. Add -c-1 as an option to disable caching.

Available Options:

Command	Description	Defaults
-p or --port	Port to use. Use -p 0 to look for an open port, starting at 8080. It will also read from process.env.PORT.	8080
-a	Address to use	0.0.0.0
-d	Show directory listings	true
-i	Display autoIndex	true
-g or --gzip	When enabled it will serve ./public/some-file.js.gz in place of ./public/some-file.js when a gzipped version of the file exists and the request accepts gzip encoding. If brotli is also enabled, it will try to serve brotli first.	false
-b or --brotli	When enabled it will serve ./public/some-file.js.br in place of ./public/some-file.js when a brotli compressed version of the file exists and the request accepts br encoding. If gzip is also enabled, it will try to serve brotli first.	false
-e or --ext	Default file extension if none supplied	html
-s or --silent	Suppress log messages from output
--cors	Enable CORS via the Access-Control-Allow-Origin header
-o [path]	Open browser window after starting the server. Optionally provide a URL path to open. e.g.: -o /other/dir/
-c	Set cache time (in seconds) for cache-control max-age header, e.g. -c10 for 10 seconds. To disable caching, use -c-1.	3600
-U or --utc	Use UTC time format in log messages.
--log-ip	Enable logging of the client's IP address	false
-P or --proxy	Proxies all requests which can't be resolved locally to the given url. e.g.: -P http://someurl.com
--proxy-options	Pass proxy options using nested dotted objects. e.g.: --proxy-options.secure false
--supabaseUrl	The supabase project-url.
--supabaseKey	The supabase projects anon-key.
--roles	The allowed roles which can access the server.	[ docs_reader ]
-S, --tls or --ssl	Enable secure request serving with TLS/SSL (HTTPS)	false
-C or --cert	Path to ssl cert file	cert.pem
-K or --key	Path to ssl key file	key.pem
-r or --robots	Automatically provide a /robots.txt (The content of which defaults to User-agent: *\nDisallow: /)	false
--no-dotfiles	Do not show dotfiles
--mimetypes	Path to a .types file for custom mimetype definition
-h or --help	Print this list and exit.
-v or --version	Print the version and exit.

Magic Files

• index.html will be served as the default file to any directory requests.
• 404.html will be served if a file is not found. This can be used for Single-Page App (SPA) hosting to serve the entry page.

Catch-all redirect

To implement a catch-all redirect, use the index page itself as the proxy with:

auth-http-server --supabaseUrl [url] --supabaseKey [anonKey] [options] --proxy http://localhost:8080?

Note the ? at the end of the proxy URL. Thanks to @houston3 for this clever hack!

TLS/SSL

First, you need to make sure that openssl is installed correctly, and you have key.pem and cert.pem files. You can generate them using this command:

openssl req -newkey rsa:2048 -new -nodes -x509 -days 3650 -keyout key.pem -out cert.pem

You will be prompted with a few questions after entering the command. Use 127.0.0.1 as value for Common name if you want to be able to install the certificate in your OS's root certificate store or browser so that it is trusted.

This generates a cert-key pair and it will be valid for 3650 days (about 10 years).

Then you need to run the server with -S for enabling SSL and -C for your certificate file.

auth-http-server --supabaseUrl [url] --supabaseKey [anonKey] -S -C cert.pem

If you wish to use a passphrase with your private key you can include one in the openssl command via the -passout parameter (using password of foobar)

e.g. openssl req -newkey rsa:2048 -passout pass:foobar -keyout key.pem -x509 -days 365 -out cert.pem

For security reasons, the passphrase will only be read from the NODE_HTTP_SERVER_SSL_PASSPHRASE environment variable.

This is what should be output if successful:

Starting up auth-http-server, serving ./ through https

http-server settings:
CORS: disabled
Cache: 3600 seconds
Connection Timeout: 120 seconds
Directory Listings: visible
AutoIndex: visible
Serve GZIP Files: false
Serve Brotli Files: false
Default File Extension: none

Available on:
  https://127.0.0.1:8080
  https://192.168.1.101:8080
  https://192.168.1.104:8080
Hit CTRL-C to stop the server

Development

Checkout this repository locally, then:

$ npm i
$ npm start

Now you can visit http://localhost:8080 to view your server

You should see the turtle image in the screenshot above hosted at that URL. See the ./public folder for demo content.