Node Express as proxy for a server that requires basic authentication - ajax

Question

So I'm using express and express-http-proxy as a proxy to an API web server that requires basic authentication. Then in my app, I'll be issuing Ajax calls to these APIs. After some effort I got this working but I'm sure there's a better way out there, hence this post.
Initially I set up the express proxy as follows:
var express = require('express'),
app = express(),
proxy = require('express-http-proxy');
app.use('/apis', proxy("https://myserver", {
forwardPath: function(req, res) {
return "/apis" + require('url').parse(req.url).path;
}
}));
When calling a URL directly in the browser (not via Ajax), eg. https://myserver/apis/myapi.ashx, I would see the authentication dialog asking me for my credentials, and I could authenticate and see the result.
However, when accessing the same URL via an Ajax call in my app, I was not getting a popup. Why this difference of behavior?
So I decided I needed to add my own basic authentication middleware using request and basic-auth as follows:
var express = require('express'),
app = express(),
proxy = require('express-http-proxy'),
request = require('request'),
basicAuth = require('basic-auth');
var myAuth = function (req, res, next) {
function unauthorized(res) {
res.set('WWW-Authenticate', 'Basic realm=Rimes');
return res.sendStatus(401);
};
var user = basicAuth(req);
if (!user || !user.name || !user.pass) {
return unauthorized(res);
};
var connectUrl = 'https://'+user.name+':'+user.pass+'#myserver/apis/connect.ashx';
request.get(connectUrl, function(error, response, body) {
if (!error && response.statusCode == 200) {
return next();
} else {
return unauthorized(res);
}
});
};
app.use('/apis', proxy("https://myserver", {
forwardPath: function(req, res) {
return "/apis" + require('url').parse(req.url).path;
}
}));
This worked fine, showing me the authentication popup during the Ajax call.
The obvious disadvantage here is:
Credential verification for every API request, although there may be a way to cache valid credentials. But in its defence, this is only on the development environment.
So is there a better way of doing this? Would a different middleware package do a better job?