Expose your local application as a public URL using ngrok
Learn how to expose your local application as a public URL using ngrok. You have developed an application and testing it in your local machine, but you want it to be accessed by someone who is at the other side of the world. You also do not have access to a cloud server with which you could deploy your application and give access to your friend. This is where ngrok comes into picture.
ngrok helps to take your application that is running in your local machine and expose it as a public URL which can be accessed by anyone who has internet access and use it. ngrok can expose your application with both http and https protocols. It doesn’t matter if your local app is in http or https.
ngrok allows you to expose a web server running on your local machine to the internet. Just let ngrok know what port your web server is listening on. Let’s see how to get this done.
Sign up on ngrok’s website
Log in to ngrok website with your account
Once you log in to your ngrok account, you will see the basic steps to setup ngrok.
Download ngrok
ngrok provides an easy to install binary with zero dependencies. Use curl to download it to your local machine.
curl https://bin.equinox.io/c/4VmDzA7iaHb/ngrok-stable-linux-amd64.zip --output ngrok.zip
Unzip the binary
unzip /home/achandran/ngrok.zip
Add your account’s authtoken to ngrok.yml
The authtoken is specific to a user, so please copy it from your ngrok’s dashboard
./ngrok authtoken 1YFwlRLe4bFHTyYOWwpNZyuuiweyr786w7e86rwvd4tay18mt4K
Start a HTTP tunnel from the port
Just point ngrok to the port your application is deployed to. If you are not sure about the port, just point it to the default http port 80.
./ngrok http 8020
Once you run this command, ngrok will open an interface with details like your account, URL to which your local web server is exposed to the public and more..
ngrok by @inconshreveable (Ctrl+C to quit)
Session Status online
Account Anand Chandran (Plan: Free)
Version 2.3.35
Region United States (us)
Web Interface http://127.0.0.1:4040
Forwarding http://6a6af1b9.ngrok.io -> http://localhost:8020
Forwarding https://6a6af1b9.ngrok.io -> http://localhost:8020
Connections ttl opn rt1 rt5 p50 p90
0 0 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 You copy the URL from this and access your application from anywhere. Eg: https://6a6af1b9.ngrok.io
