Using Config Files With ngrok
Want to learn more about using ngork? Check out this tutorial on how to use config files with ngork for testing locally on your applications.
I'm a huge fan of ngrok. Ngrok is a tool that can create a secure tunnel to your laptop. It is brilliant for testing, well, anything running locally. Someone asked me about my setup recently, and I'm using a couple of config files to keep things quick and consistent, so I thought I'd share here what I shared with them.
You can use a central config file for ngrok and/or specific config files for each project. I use both, so I'll demonstrate my setup.
Main Config File
The main config file for ngrok is probably the right place for most settings. When you log in, your auth token is stored here. I also have my region set to eu since that's where my servers and I are normally located; the default value here is us.
Also, in this config file, I have two tunnels defined:
authtoken: Redacted
region: eu
tunnels:
ljnexmo:
proto: http
addr: 8080
hostname: ljnexmo.eu.ngrok.io
test:
proto: http
addr: 8080
subdomain: f85c1a3fI do have tunnels configured here, but I don't always use these with ngrok. I work in multiple server-side languages and their "usual" port numbers all differ, so I'm as likely to start a tunnel with ngrok http --subdomain=f85c1a3f 3000. The tunnel configs are very handy, especially for a setup that needs more settings than these or that you will need to use over and over.
A great example of a tunnel that I've used a lot is one used in my book, PHP Web Services. Ngrok config files can only be in one region or another, so I used a separate config file for this, which lives in the same directory as the code examples. It looks like this:
region: us
tunnels:
phpwebservices:
proto: http
addr: 8080
subdomain: 29baf15In real life, using a per-project config like this is super helpful. It keeps things together, especially if different projects want to take advantage of different regions.
To use this tunnel, my command looks like this:
ngrok start --config=ngrok-phpws.yml phpwebservicesI do tend to reserve the domains I'm using since I have a paid account with ngrok. You can see a few places where I started using a domain and then realized I'd better reserve it!
Pro-tip: Even without a paid account, you can request a specific subdomain when starting your tunnel. If it's available then, you can use it. This is super helpful when restarting tunnels during a project — it saves time updating URLs everywhere!
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Published at DZone with permission of Lorna Mitchell. See the original article here.
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