How to create a simple proxy in C#?

I wouldn't use HttpListener or something like that, in that way you'll come across so many issues.

Most importantly it'll be a huge pain to support:

• Proxy Keep-Alives
• SSL won't work (in a correct way, you'll get popups)
• .NET libraries strictly follows RFCs which causes some requests to fail (even though IE, FF and any other browser in the world will work.)

What you need to do is:

• Listen a TCP port
• Parse the browser request
• Extract Host connect to that host in TCP level
• Forward everything back and forth unless you want to add custom headers etc.

I wrote 2 different HTTP proxies in .NET with different requirements and I can tell you that this is the best way to do it.

Mentalis doing this, but their code is "delegate spaghetti", worse than GoTo :)

You can build one with the HttpListener class to listen for incoming requests and the HttpWebRequest class to relay the requests.

Proxy can work in the following way.

Step1, configure client to use proxyHost:proxyPort.

Proxy is a TCP server that is listening on proxyHost:proxyPort. Browser opens connection with Proxy and sends Http request. Proxy parses this request and tries to detect "Host" header. This header will tell Proxy where to open connection.

Step 2: Proxy opens connection to the address specified in the "Host" header. Then it sends HTTP request to that remote server. Reads response.

Step 3: After response is read from remote HTTP server, Proxy sends the response through an earlier opened TCP connection with browser.

Schematically it will look like this:

Browser                            Proxy                     HTTP server
  Open TCP connection  
  Send HTTP request  ----------->                       
                                 Read HTTP header
                                 detect Host header
                                 Send request to HTTP ----------->
                                 Server
                                                      <-----------
                                 Read response and send
                   <-----------  it back to the browser
Render content

For what it's worth, here is a C# sample async implementation based on HttpListener and HttpClient (I use it to be able to connect Chrome in Android devices to IIS Express, that's the only way I found...).

And If you need HTTPS support, it shouldn't require more code, just certificate configuration: Httplistener with HTTPS support

// define http://localhost:5000 and http://127.0.0.1:5000/ to be proxies for http://localhost:53068
using (var server = new ProxyServer("http://localhost:53068", "http://localhost:5000/", "http://127.0.0.1:5000/"))
{
    server.Start();
    Console.WriteLine("Press ESC to stop server.");
    while (true)
    {
        var key = Console.ReadKey(true);
        if (key.Key == ConsoleKey.Escape)
            break;
    }
    server.Stop();
}

....

public class ProxyServer : IDisposable
{
    private readonly HttpListener _listener;
    private readonly int _targetPort;
    private readonly string _targetHost;
    private static readonly HttpClient _client = new HttpClient();

    public ProxyServer(string targetUrl, params string[] prefixes)
        : this(new Uri(targetUrl), prefixes)
    {
    }

    public ProxyServer(Uri targetUrl, params string[] prefixes)
    {
        if (targetUrl == null)
            throw new ArgumentNullException(nameof(targetUrl));

        if (prefixes == null)
            throw new ArgumentNullException(nameof(prefixes));

        if (prefixes.Length == 0)
            throw new ArgumentException(null, nameof(prefixes));

        RewriteTargetInText = true;
        RewriteHost = true;
        RewriteReferer = true;
        TargetUrl = targetUrl;
        _targetHost = targetUrl.Host;
        _targetPort = targetUrl.Port;
        Prefixes = prefixes;

        _listener = new HttpListener();
        foreach (var prefix in prefixes)
        {
            _listener.Prefixes.Add(prefix);
        }
    }

    public Uri TargetUrl { get; }
    public string[] Prefixes { get; }
    public bool RewriteTargetInText { get; set; }
    public bool RewriteHost { get; set; }
    public bool RewriteReferer { get; set; } // this can have performance impact...

    public void Start()
    {
        _listener.Start();
        _listener.BeginGetContext(ProcessRequest, null);
    }

    private async void ProcessRequest(IAsyncResult result)
    {
        if (!_listener.IsListening)
            return;

        var ctx = _listener.EndGetContext(result);
        _listener.BeginGetContext(ProcessRequest, null);
        await ProcessRequest(ctx).ConfigureAwait(false);
    }

    protected virtual async Task ProcessRequest(HttpListenerContext context)
    {
        if (context == null)
            throw new ArgumentNullException(nameof(context));

        var url = TargetUrl.GetComponents(UriComponents.SchemeAndServer, UriFormat.Unescaped);
        using (var msg = new HttpRequestMessage(new HttpMethod(context.Request.HttpMethod), url + context.Request.RawUrl))
        {
            msg.Version = context.Request.ProtocolVersion;

            if (context.Request.HasEntityBody)
            {
                msg.Content = new StreamContent(context.Request.InputStream); // disposed with msg
            }

            string host = null;
            foreach (string headerName in context.Request.Headers)
            {
                var headerValue = context.Request.Headers[headerName];
                if (headerName == "Content-Length" && headerValue == "0") // useless plus don't send if we have no entity body
                    continue;

                bool contentHeader = false;
                switch (headerName)
                {
                    // some headers go to content...
                    case "Allow":
                    case "Content-Disposition":
                    case "Content-Encoding":
                    case "Content-Language":
                    case "Content-Length":
                    case "Content-Location":
                    case "Content-MD5":
                    case "Content-Range":
                    case "Content-Type":
                    case "Expires":
                    case "Last-Modified":
                        contentHeader = true;
                        break;

                    case "Referer":
                        if (RewriteReferer && Uri.TryCreate(headerValue, UriKind.Absolute, out var referer)) // if relative, don't handle
                        {
                            var builder = new UriBuilder(referer);
                            builder.Host = TargetUrl.Host;
                            builder.Port = TargetUrl.Port;
                            headerValue = builder.ToString();
                        }
                        break;

                    case "Host":
                        host = headerValue;
                        if (RewriteHost)
                        {
                            headerValue = TargetUrl.Host + ":" + TargetUrl.Port;
                        }
                        break;
                }

                if (contentHeader)
                {
                    msg.Content.Headers.Add(headerName, headerValue);
                }
                else
                {
                    msg.Headers.Add(headerName, headerValue);
                }
            }

            using (var response = await _client.SendAsync(msg).ConfigureAwait(false))
            {
                using (var os = context.Response.OutputStream)
                {
                    context.Response.ProtocolVersion = response.Version;
                    context.Response.StatusCode = (int)response.StatusCode;
                    context.Response.StatusDescription = response.ReasonPhrase;

                    foreach (var header in response.Headers)
                    {
                        context.Response.Headers.Add(header.Key, string.Join(", ", header.Value));
                    }

                    foreach (var header in response.Content.Headers)
                    {
                        if (header.Key == "Content-Length") // this will be set automatically at dispose time
                            continue;

                        context.Response.Headers.Add(header.Key, string.Join(", ", header.Value));
                    }

                    var ct = context.Response.ContentType;
                    if (RewriteTargetInText && host != null && ct != null &&
                        (ct.IndexOf("text/html", StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase) >= 0 ||
                        ct.IndexOf("application/json", StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase) >= 0))
                    {
                        using (var ms = new MemoryStream())
                        {
                            using (var stream = await response.Content.ReadAsStreamAsync().ConfigureAwait(false))
                            {
                                await stream.CopyToAsync(ms).ConfigureAwait(false);
                                var enc = context.Response.ContentEncoding ?? Encoding.UTF8;
                                var html = enc.GetString(ms.ToArray());
                                if (TryReplace(html, "//" + _targetHost + ":" + _targetPort + "/", "//" + host + "/", out var replaced))
                                {
                                    var bytes = enc.GetBytes(replaced);
                                    using (var ms2 = new MemoryStream(bytes))
                                    {
                                        ms2.Position = 0;
                                        await ms2.CopyToAsync(context.Response.OutputStream).ConfigureAwait(false);
                                    }
                                }
                                else
                                {
                                    ms.Position = 0;
                                    await ms.CopyToAsync(context.Response.OutputStream).ConfigureAwait(false);
                                }
                            }
                        }
                    }
                    else
                    {
                        using (var stream = await response.Content.ReadAsStreamAsync().ConfigureAwait(false))
                        {
                            await stream.CopyToAsync(context.Response.OutputStream).ConfigureAwait(false);
                        }
                    }
                }
            }
        }
    }

    public void Stop() => _listener.Stop();
    public override string ToString() => string.Join(", ", Prefixes) + " => " + TargetUrl;
    public void Dispose() => ((IDisposable)_listener)?.Dispose();

    // out-of-the-box replace doesn't tell if something *was* replaced or not
    private static bool TryReplace(string input, string oldValue, string newValue, out string result)
    {
        if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(input) || string.IsNullOrEmpty(oldValue))
        {
            result = input;
            return false;
        }

        var oldLen = oldValue.Length;
        var sb = new StringBuilder(input.Length);
        bool changed = false;
        var offset = 0;
        for (int i = 0; i < input.Length; i++)
        {
            var c = input[i];

            if (offset > 0)
            {
                if (c == oldValue[offset])
                {
                    offset++;
                    if (oldLen == offset)
                    {
                        changed = true;
                        sb.Append(newValue);
                        offset = 0;
                    }
                    continue;
                }

                for (int j = 0; j < offset; j++)
                {
                    sb.Append(input[i - offset + j]);
                }

                sb.Append(c);
                offset = 0;
            }
            else
            {
                if (c == oldValue[0])
                {
                    if (oldLen == 1)
                    {
                        changed = true;
                        sb.Append(newValue);
                    }
                    else
                    {
                        offset = 1;
                    }
                    continue;
                }

                sb.Append(c);
            }
        }

        if (changed)
        {
            result = sb.ToString();
            return true;
        }

        result = input;
        return false;
    }
}

The browser is connected to the proxy so the data that the proxy gets from the web server is just sent via the same connection that the browser initiated to the proxy.