This is a quick hacky way to get the ionic start [appName] command working from behind a proxy. I ran into the problem going through the steps on the Getting Started with Ionic page. For some reason the ionic cmd doesn't use the npm proxy or git proxy settings.

I did this on a Windows 7 machine but the same should work in another OS just the file locations will be different.

1. Add the proxy url to request.js located at 'C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Roaming\npm\node_modules\ionic\node_modules\request\request.js'. Here's the update including the lines just before and after so you can find where to put it.

  if (self.strictSSL === false) {

    self.rejectUnauthorized = false

  }

  // hack to add proxy

  self.proxy = 'http://10.68.0.5:8080';

  if (self.proxy) {

    if (typeof self.proxy == 'string') self.proxy = url.parse(self.proxy)

    // do the HTTP CONNECT dance using koichik/node-tunnel

    if (http.globalAgent && self.uri.protocol === "https:") {

      var tunnelFn = self.proxy.protocol === "http:"

                   ? tunnel.httpsOverHttp : tunnel.httpsOverHttps

      var tunnelOptions = { proxy: { host: self.proxy.hostname

                                   , port: +self.proxy.port

                                   , proxyAuth: self.proxy.auth

                                   , headers: { Host: self.uri.hostname + ':' +

                                        (self.uri.port || self.uri.protocol === 'https:' ? 443 : 80) }}

                          , rejectUnauthorized: self.rejectUnauthorized

                          , ca: this.ca }

      self.agent = tunnelFn(tunnelOptions)

      self.tunnel = true

    }

  }

2. Add the proxy url to registry.js located at 'C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Roaming\npm\node_modules\cordova\node_modules\plugman\src\registry\registry.js', again I've included the lines around the hack so you can find where to put it.

  headers.accept = "application/json"

  headers["user-agent"] = settings['user-agent'] ||

                          'node/' + process.version

  // hack to add proxy

  var p = settings.proxy || 'http://10.68.0.5:8080'

  var sp = settings['https-proxy'] || p

  opts.proxy = remote.protocol === "https:" ? sp : p

  // figure out wth 'what' is

  if (what) {

    if (Buffer.isBuffer(what) || typeof what === "string") {

      opts.body = what

      headers["content-type"] = "application/json"

      headers["content-length"] = Buffer.byteLength(what)

    } else {

      opts.json = what

    }

  }

That's it! You should now be able to create ionic apps without an issue.

Just in case people are searching for how to do this by googling the command line errors, I've included them below.

First error

D:\Projects>ionic start myApp tabs

Running start task...

Creating Ionic app in folder D:\Projects\myApp based on tabs project

DOWNLOADING: https://github.com/driftyco/ionic-app-base/archive/master.zip

TypeError: Cannot read property 'statusCode' of undefined

    at Request._callback (C:\Users\watmorj\AppData\Roaming\npm\node_modules\ionic\lib\ionic.js:241:13)

    at self.callback (C:\Users\watmorj\AppData\Roaming\npm\node_modules\ionic\node_modules\request\request.js:129:22)

    at Request.EventEmitter.emit (events.js:95:17)

    at ClientRequest.self.clientErrorHandler (C:\Users\watmorj\AppData\Roaming\npm\node_modules\ionic\node_modules\request\request.js:239:10)

    at ClientRequest.EventEmitter.emit (events.js:95:17)

    at CleartextStream.socketErrorListener (http.js:1547:9)

    at CleartextStream.EventEmitter.emit (events.js:95:17)

    at Socket.onerror (tls.js:1445:17)

    at Socket.EventEmitter.emit (events.js:117:20)

    at net.js:441:14

Second error

Initializing cordova project.

Fetching plugin "org.apache.cordova.device" via plugin registry

Error: Failed to fetch package information for org.apache.cordova.device

    at C:\Users\watmorj\AppData\Roaming\npm\node_modules\cordova\node_modules\plugman\src\registry\registry.js:32:20

    at Request.cb [as _callback] (C:\Users\watmorj\AppData\Roaming\npm\node_modules\cordova\node_modules\plugman\src\registry\registry.js:251:9)

    at self.callback (C:\Users\watmorj\AppData\Roaming\npm\node_modules\cordova\node_modules\plugman\node_modules\request\index.js:148:22)

    at Request.EventEmitter.emit (events.js:117:20)

    at ClientRequest.self.clientErrorHandler (C:\Users\watmorj\AppData\Roaming\npm\node_modules\cordova\node_modules\plugman\node_modules\request\index.js:257:10)

    at ClientRequest.EventEmitter.emit (events.js:95:17)

    at Socket.socketErrorListener (http.js:1547:9)

    at Socket.EventEmitter.emit (events.js:95:17)

    at net.js:441:14

    at process._tickCallback (node.js:415:13)

ERROR: Unable to add plugins. Perhaps your version of Cordova is too old. Try updating (npm install -g cordova), removing this project folder, and trying again.

Exiting.