tunnel.now

Zeit's now platform is fantastic for rapid iteration on Node.js projects. But sometimes - when debugging a webhook, for example - you might want to run your project on your development machine, somehow handling the requests from there.

Of course, you could make changes, deploy to now, and update the alias as you go. However, this project provides an alternative for those times when you want a faster iteration cycle before deploying a final version to the cloud: it tunnels HTTP requests that are sent to now to your local dev machine.

Quick start

Step 1: Install

$ npm install -g tunnel.now

Step 2: Update npm links (optional)

This step is only necessary for users of nodenv.

$ nodenv rehash

Step 3: Deploy your tunnel endpoint

$ tunnel.deploy

  _                                _
 | |_   _  _   _ _    _ _    ___  | |      _ _    ___  __ __ __
 |  _| | || | | ' \  | ' \  / -_) | |  _  | ' \  / _ \ \ V  V /
  \__|  \_,_| |_||_| |_||_| \___| |_| (_) |_||_| \___/  \_/\_/

✔ Deployed tunnel.now instance on tunnelnow-xrjajpfyyl.now.sh

  Tunnel Usage:
   `tunnel.now tunnelnow-xrjajpfyyl.now.sh <local-port>`

You can also alias directly at this step, like so:

$ tunnel.deploy my-alias.now.sh

  _                                _
 | |_   _  _   _ _    _ _    ___  | |      _ _    ___  __ __ __
 |  _| | || | | ' \  | ' \  / -_) | |  _  | ' \  / _ \ \ V  V /
  \__|  \_,_| |_||_| |_||_| \___| |_| (_) |_||_| \___/  \_/\_/

✔ Deployed tunnel.now instance on tunnelnow-xrjajpfyyl.now.sh
✔ Pointing my-alias.now.sh to tunnelnow-xrjajpfyyl.now.sh

  Tunnel Usage:
   `tunnel.now my-alias.now.sh <local-port>`

As well as adding security through a token:

$ tunnel.deploy --token Tu0IH5IVwv5k

  _                                _
 | |_   _  _   _ _    _ _    ___  | |      _ _    ___  __ __ __
 |  _| | || | | ' \  | ' \  / -_) | |  _  | ' \  / _ \ \ V  V /
  \__|  \_,_| |_||_| |_||_| \___| |_| (_) |_||_| \___/  \_/\_/

✔ Deployed tunnel.now instance on tunnelnow-xrjajpfyyl.now.sh
✔ Pointing my-alias.now.sh to tunnelnow-xrjajpfyyl.now.sh

  Tunnel Usage:
   `tunnel.now tunnelnow-xrjajpfyyl.now.sh <local-port> --token Tu0IH5IVwv5k`

Note that this deployment can be re-used however many times you'd like.

Step 4: Start your application server

In your project, do whatever you need to do to start your server, and take note of the port that is opened:

$ npm run start
Listening on port 8080...

In this case, that's port 8080.

Step 5: In a separate terminal, start your tunnel

tunnel.now takes three arguments:

1. The now hostname. This will be either the hostname that now provided to you, or the alias that you specified during step 3. That's my-alias.now.sh in the example above.
2. The port one which your locally-running application is listening. That's 8080 in the example above.
3. The token argument, which is only required if you specified one during step 3.

$ tunnel.now my-alias.now.sh 8080 --token Tu0IH5IVwv5k

  _                                _
 | |_   _  _   _ _    _ _    ___  | |      _ _    ___  __ __ __
 |  _| | || | | ' \  | ' \  / -_) | |  _  | ' \  / _ \ \ V  V /
  \__|  \_,_| |_||_| |_||_| \___| |_| (_) |_||_| \___/  \_/\_/

✔ Connected to wss://my-alias.now.sh:443
ℹ Tunneling requests to http://localhost:8080

Step 6: Open your browser!

Any HTTP requests made to the now hostname or alias will be tunneled to your local machine.

Module API

You can also open a tunnel connection through require('@rexlabs/tunnel.now').

const TunnelNow = require('@rexlabs/tunnel.now')

const tunnelSocket = TunnelNow({
  remoteHostname: 'my-alias.now.sh',
  localPort: '8080',
  token: 'Tu0IH5IVwv5k'
})

tunnelSocket.addEventListener('open', () => {
  console.log('Connected!')
})

FAQ

Does this work with other services?
Yes. The only hard requirement is that the host provides HTTP and WebSocket support. However, you will need to deploy the tunnel.now repo yourself.

License

This project is covered under the MIT License. Please see the LICENSE file for more information.