Expose your development application to the world without the hassle of deployment !!!
Share your application with others before deployment using localtunnel or ngrok
A few years back, I was trying to make a realtime board game using MeteorJS and wanted to show it to my friends. I was thinking if I could share it from my pc, it would be great for me as my friends could give reviews of it.
But, I didn’t know anything else except deploying the whole application to a cloud server. Then, I came to know a tool that made my life way more easier!
Meet — Localtunnel
Suppose we have a node application running on port:3000 which we need to share. Let’s use localtunnel to solve this problem.
First of all, let’s install localtunnel on our development environment -
npm install -g localtunnelWe’re half done already!!!
Now, we can use localtunnel to expose our application with the command below —
lt --port 3000This will output something like this -
your url is: https://kfntbxasdvt.localtunnel.meNow, visit the url and BOOM ! Your application is UP & RUNNING with that URL!!! How cool is that !
Even, you can use a custom subdomain name instead of some random characters -
lt --port 3000 --subdomain mysubdomainNow, you can share that url with your friends to show your app from your development environment. Cheers 🍻
Know more at https://localtunnel.me
Alternatives — ngrok
ngrok is a more reliable option for this type of tunnel work. It offers both free & paid version of the tool. Usage is almost same as localtunnel with more features.
NOTE
- Based on your environment settings like firewall and proxy related configuration, your tunneling may not work out of the box. In that case you need to adjust respective configurations.
- Use this solely for testing purposes as these tools are not as reliable as a proper deployment.
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