TL;DR
In fact, in Playwright v.1.31.1
there are three ways to configure an HTTP proxy:
chromium.launch
browser.newContext
-
page.setExtraHTTPHeaders
, but works only on Firefox
Today I was struggling with proxy setup for Browserless ...
Official docs says:
Both browserless, and Chrome itself, support the usage of external proxies. In order to fully utilize a 3rd-party proxy you'll need to do two things:
- Specify the address of where the proxy is with the `--proxy-server` switch.
- Optionally, you'll also need to send in your username and password if the proxy is authenticated.
Ok, so I need to set --proxy-server
. I was using a Docker image to run Browserless locally. I discovered that there is an environment variable called PROXY_URL
:
podman run --rm -p 3000:3000 -e "PROXY_URL=my-proxy-url" browserless/chrome:latest
Fine, but how do I pass on the username and password?
Docs say there are two methods:
## Using username and password
### Method 1: page.authenticate
### Method 2: page.setExtraHTTPHeaders
I'm using playwright-java
and there is no method page.authenticate
, so page.setExtraHTTPHeaders
left, I thought.
page.setExtraHTTPHeaders(Map.of("Proxy-Authorization", "Basic "
+ new String(Base64.getEncoder().encode("username:password".getBytes()))));
Unfortunately, it does not work. I received the following strange error: net::ERR_INVALID_ARGUMENT
. Besides there was no errors in container's logs. What's the hack?
Google's top two results for playwright Proxy-Authorization
:
- node.js - How do I authenticate a proxy in playwright - Stack Overflow
- Proxy-Authorization header not working in Chromium · Issue #443 · microsoft/playwright-python · GitHub
I quickly checked the first link. The answer says that there are two ways. I didn't read further, because I thought that I know these ways - one is method I'm struggling with and second chromium.launch
, right? :) Later it turned out that I was wrong!
The second link looks like what I need. However issue was closed without any conclusion. The alternative shown, was one that I already knew:
browser = await playwright.chromium.launch(
proxy={"server": "localhost:8080", "username": "user", "password": ""},
)
The case was that I didn't want to lanuch
browser, but rather connect
to one created inside container.
I dug even deeper and found another similar issue in Playwright project:
# [Feature] Directly set Proxy-Authorization in Chrome without configuring any other proxy settings
The problem (in Chrome/Chromium anyway) is that
Proxy-Authorization
may not be set explicitly viaextraHTTPHeaders
. If you do this and then try to navigate to any page Chrome will give you the following error:net::ERR_INVALID_ARGUMENT
.
I was lost, considering changing my approach...
Fortunately, my teammate assisted me by showing some examples of where I found a missing piece:
Browser.NewContextOptions options = new Browser.NewContextOptions()
.setProxy(new Proxy("my-proxy-url")
.setUsername("username")
.setPassword("password"));
BrowserContext context = browser.newContext(options);
Ta da! As simple as that! 😃
I checked the playwright docs and it appears to be possible:
Proxy can be either set globally for the entire browser, or for each browser context individually.
Unluckily there is no example, so it's hard to spot.
I also double-checked node.js - How do I authenticate a proxy in playwright - Stack Overflow and configuring proxy via browser.newContext
was actually there, but I missed it (confused by Browserless docs?):
const browser = await chromium.launch({
proxy: { server: 'per-context' }
});
const context = await browser.newContext({
proxy: { server: 'http://myproxy.com:3128' }
})
Getting to the point:
Festina lente ("hurry slowly") and read comprehension!
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