@zintrust/expose

The @zintrust/expose package provides an official ZinTrust CLI extension to instantly expose your local development environment to the internet via secure tunnels.

Docs: https://zintrust.com/package-expose

It allows you to share your work with clients, test webhooks, or test on mobile devices without deploying your application.

Prerequisites

This package requires a ZinTrust project using @zintrust/core ^0.4.0 or higher to run. By default, standard templates include and load this package automatically.

Usage

Use the global zin command (or npx tsx bin/zin.ts) in your application root to invoke the expose CLI command (also aliased as exp).

Basic Command

zin expose [port] [options]

Options

• [port]: The local port you want to expose. If omitted, ZinTrust will attempt to read process.env.PORT from your .env file, defaulting to 3000 otherwise.
• --provider <provider>: The backend tunneling service to use. Supports cloudflare or zintrust. (Default: cloudflare)
• --https: Enable if the local target you are exposing expects HTTPS traffic (e.g., exposing a local self-signed dev server).

Tunnel Providers

The package ships with two native tunneling providers:

1. Cloudflare Tunnels (Default)

The cloudflare provider utilizes Cloudflare's cloudflared utility behind the scenes to spawn rapid, ephemeral tunnels. It's incredibly fast and requires no authentication, granting you a randomized .trycloudflare.com URL instantly.

Examples:

Expose the default port (automatically read from .env):

zin exp

Explicitly expose port 8080 via Cloudflare:

zin exp 8080 --provider cloudflare

Expose a local HTTPS container running on port 443:

zin exp 443 --https

2. ZinTrust Tunnels

The zintrust provider connects to the ZinTrust internal tunneling network. This is useful for authenticated developer environments, persistent subdomains, and connecting services inside the ZinTrust ecosystem.

Examples:

Expose port 3000 using the native ZinTrust tunnel:

zin expose 3000 --provider zintrust

Expose your local environment via ZinTrust securely over HTTPS:

zin exp --https --provider zintrust

How It Works Under The Hood

ZinTrust registers @zintrust/expose as an Optional CLI Extension. When the framework bootstraps bin/zin.ts, the package exposes its provider definitions ITunnelProvider through TunnelManager.

When a tunnel is requested, a child process hooks into the requested provider (like cloudflared), safely negotiating the handshake and parsing the generated secure URL back to the developer console. When the CLI is exited (via Ctrl+C), the package safely and automatically cleans up the tunnel child processes.