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Build the proxy as three protocol-specific entry points—ordinary HTTP forwarding, HTTPS CONNECT tunneling, and SOCKS5 negotiation—over shared destination policy, dialing, logging, metrics, and connection lifecycle code. Go’s net/http proxy settings configure outbound clients; they do not create an inbound HTTP-and-SOCKS5 proxy server. HTTPS proxying also does not, by itself, let the proxy read encrypted application traffic.
How should a Go proxy be organized?
Keep each protocol’s parsing and handshake separate, then share the parts that happen after a destination has been identified. This is a suggested architecture, not a feature supplied by Go’s client proxy support.
Separate protocol handling from forwarding
- HTTP handler: accepts an ordinary proxy request, validates its destination and policy, forwards it, and returns the upstream response.
- CONNECT handler: validates the requested authority, opens an upstream TCP connection, acknowledges the tunnel, then relays bytes in both directions.
- SOCKS5 handler: negotiates a method, parses a request, applies destination policy, and sends a protocol-appropriate reply before relaying supported connections.
- Shared layer: provides context-aware dialing, destination and port restrictions, timeouts, structured lifecycle logs, metrics, and shutdown coordination.
Go’s net/http.Transport documents proxy support for outbound HTTP and HTTPS requests, including CONNECT, as well as SOCKS5 proxy URLs. Reusing clients and transports is appropriate for outbound client work, but configuring one does not implement the inbound handlers above.
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How do I build an HTTP proxy in Go?
Forward ordinary HTTP requests
- Accept the request on an inbound listener using an HTTP server and handler.
- Parse the destination from the proxy request and reject malformed or disallowed authorities before dialing. Apply an explicit policy for reachable hosts and ports; an inbound proxy should not become an unauthenticated open relay for untrusted networks.
- Use a context-aware dial path with explicit timeouts, then forward the request and relay the upstream response. Close response bodies and connections on success, failure, and cancellation.
- Record the outcome and duration without writing credentials, authorization headers, or payload contents to logs.
Ordinary HTTP forwarding is a request/response path: the proxy processes the HTTP request and response. It is not the same operation as establishing a CONNECT tunnel.
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Do not confuse server and client proxy configuration
A Go client can be configured to send its own outbound requests through a proxy by using a transport. That is useful when your application is a proxy client. It does not parse incoming proxy requests, enforce an inbound access policy, or accept SOCKS5 handshakes. Those are server responsibilities.
How do I support HTTPS CONNECT in a Go proxy?
Treat CONNECT as a tunnel
- Receive the CONNECT request and validate its authority, including the allowed destination port.
- Establish the upstream TCP connection before reporting success. If dialing fails, return an appropriate failure rather than claiming a tunnel exists.
- After successful handling, acknowledge CONNECT according to HTTP proxy behavior and relay bytes bidirectionally between the client connection and the upstream connection.
- Stop both copy directions and close their resources when either side closes, a deadline expires, or the request is cancelled. Ensure the handler does not leave one copy goroutine blocked after the other direction finishes.
For a normal HTTPS proxy tunnel, the client negotiates TLS with the destination through the proxy. The proxy carries encrypted bytes; it cannot inspect the encrypted application content merely because it supports HTTPS proxying. Reading that content would require an explicitly designed TLS interception system, which is a different security and trust model.
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Keep tunnel logs metadata-only
Log a normalized destination only where policy permits, along with protocol, result class, and elapsed time. Do not log tunnel bytes, authentication material, or sensitive headers. Consider whether destination names themselves should be redacted or sampled in your environment.
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Implement negotiation before relay
SOCKS5 is not an HTTP request format. RFC 1928 defines a version and authentication-method negotiation followed by a request/reply exchange. The request contains a command and destination; the protocol supports IPv4, domain-name, and IPv6 address forms.
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- Read and validate the version-5 greeting and the methods offered by the client.
- Select only a method your server actually supports, or reject the negotiation if there is no acceptable method. If username/password authentication is enabled, RFC 1929 defines that exchange; it does not make the credentials encrypted.
- Read the SOCKS request, validate its command and address type, and apply the same destination and port policy used by the HTTP handlers.
- For a supported TCP CONNECT request, dial the destination, send the correct success or failure reply, and relay bytes until closure or cancellation.
- Return protocol-appropriate failure replies for unsupported commands, address types, and connection failures. Do not silently treat an unsupported command as CONNECT.
State the implementation boundary clearly
A TCP proxy that implements CONNECT is a limited SOCKS5 server, not full command coverage. RFC 1928 also defines BIND and UDP ASSOCIATE. Unless those flows are implemented, reject them explicitly. Document whether domain names are resolved by the proxy or elsewhere, which authentication methods are enabled, and which address forms and commands are supported.
How do I add Prometheus metrics to a Go proxy?
Prometheus documents an official Go client library, custom application metrics, a /metrics endpoint via promhttp, and scrape configuration. Its Go guide states: “Prometheus has an official Go client library that you can use to instrument Go applications.”
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Measure useful outcomes without unbounded labels
Start with counters for accepted connections and failures, plus a duration observation for completed work. Use bounded labels such as protocol (http, connect, or socks5) and a small result class (for example, success or failure). Do not use arbitrary hostnames, client IP addresses, or other high-cardinality values as metric labels.
Expose the metrics handler on a listener or route that matches your access policy, then configure Prometheus to scrape that endpoint. Keep metric labels and destination details separate: a hostname may be useful in a carefully controlled log, but it is a poor label when clients can request arbitrary destinations.
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How do I run a Go proxy in Docker?
Containerize the proxy only after its listener, access policy, metrics endpoint, and shutdown behavior are explicit. A container configuration must match the actual application ports and runtime requirements; do not copy a generic Dockerfile or publish a metrics listener unintentionally. Verify image-build and runtime choices against current Docker documentation before using them in production.
- Decide which listener accepts proxy traffic and which, if any, exposes metrics.
- Restrict network reachability to the intended clients and monitoring system; container packaging does not replace proxy authentication or destination policy.
- Ensure process shutdown closes listeners and active connections cleanly, and make the container’s stop behavior compatible with that lifecycle.
- Choose the image, build approach, runtime user and capabilities, health-check behavior, and port mappings for the target deployment rather than assuming one set of defaults fits every proxy.
No production Dockerfile or docker run command is given here: those details require deployment-specific choices and validation against current Docker guidance.
Quick Recap
What should you verify before exposing the proxy?
- HTTP forwarding, CONNECT, and SOCKS5 each follow their own protocol path; test them separately.
- Only intended clients can connect, and destination and port policy is enforced for every protocol.
- SOCKS5 authentication, supported commands, address forms, and DNS behavior are documented and tested.
- Dialing has timeouts and cancellation, and connection resources are closed on every outcome.
- Logs exclude credentials and payloads; metrics use bounded labels.
- Proxy and metrics listeners are reachable only by their intended audiences, including when deployed in a container.
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