PHP Bandwidth Hero Proxy

⚠️ Work in progress. Any feedback is highly appreciated!

Alternative proxy for Bandwidth Hero browser extension written in PHP.

• Original node.js service
• Frontend

This service lowers your bandwidth usage by compressing images before they are sent to your device. You have to host the service on your home server, webhosting (works very well for me) or service like Heroku. It's not an anonymization proxy.

Why?

Necessity is the mother of invention

Our old webhosting doesn't support node.js and I'm currently working on moblie connection a lot, so I welcome any way to save some megabytes here and there.

PHP itself brings some new possibilities to the table too. It's nice to have options to choose from.

Demo

Installation

Docker

• Pull the container

  docker pull ghcr.io/staifa/php-bandwidth-hero-proxy:latest
  

• Or build it by running following command in the root folder of this project

  docker build -t php-bandwidth-hero-proxy .
  

• then run it
  • without basic authorization

    docker run -p 9696:8000 --name php-bandwidth-hero-proxy php-bandwidth-hero-proxy
    

  • or preferably with authorization credentials passed as env variables

    docker run -p 9696:8000 -e BHERO_LOGIN='username' -e BHERO_PASSWORD='password' --name php-bandwidth-hero-proxy php-bandwidth-hero-proxy
    

  • and verify that the service is running by pasting following link into web browser. Don't forget to add auth header if needed.

    http://localhost:9696/?url=https://1gr.cz/o/sph/mask-map3.png&l=20
    

Manual setup

• Clone this repository or download the source archive here
• After unpacking the archive, copy all files and folders over ftp or drop them via your webhosting web gui to the root folder of your domain
• Wait for a bit for changes to settle

Browser extension setup

• Install the extension for your favourite browser

  • Chrome
  • Firefox

• Find extension settings in your browser menu

  

• Find the Configure data compression service button under Compression settings menu option

• Paste a link to your compression service to the big URL input field

Configuration

Authentication is off by default. There are 2 ways to set basic auth with username and password

• Setting them in you system environment variables

  • Windows
  • Linux/MacOS

    export BHERO_LOGIN=yourusername
    export BHERO_PASSWORD=yourpassword
    

• Editing config.php file

  • Change following lines

    "auth_user" => $_ENV("BHERO_LOGIN"),
    "auth_password" => $_ENV("BHERO_PASSWORD"),
    

  • to

    "auth_user" => "yourusername",
    "auth_password" => "yourpassword",
    

All other settings have sane defaults and can be changed in the extension settings. Quality is set between 0 to 100, 40 being a default. Greyscale setting is available for even more bandwidth savings.

Running locally

To run the service on your local machine:

• Be sure to have latest php installed

• Open a terminal window and navigate to the service directory

• Run

  php -S localhost:8000 index.php

• You'll now have the service running on your localhost on port 8000 as indicated by the log in your terminal

  

• To verify everything works, paste following link into your browser

  http://localhost:8000/?url=https://raw.githubusercontent.com/PortsMaster/PortMaster-New/main/ports/half-life/screenshot.jpg
  

If you see crappy screenshot from Half-Life, congratulations!

If not, feel free to open an issue!

Running tests

• From project's root directory, go to test folder and run

  php test_runner.php

• Or use Docker

  docker exec --workdir /usr/src/app/test php-bandwidth-hero-proxy php test_runner.php