@movable/socketproxy

SocketProxy

Expose a local node http server via a remote URL.

Motivation: you run a local http-based node app that you want to expose to the world, and you also have the ability to run a public node app elsewhere.

SocketProxy comes in two parts:

• The SocketProxy client connects to the SocketProxy server via websockets and receives a public subdomain URL.
• The SocketProxy server listens on an http/https port, maps the request subdomain to a SocketProxy client, and then proxies the http/https request to the SocketProxy client over websockets.

Usage

The server works out of the box, the client will need to be customized for your app. Starting the server:

bin/server --port=8080

See bin/server --help for all options.

An example client can be found at bin/example-client.

const SocketProxy = require('socketproxy');

const app = express();
app.use(...)

const proxy = new SocketProxy({
  url: 'ws://socketproxy-server:8080',
  app: app
});

proxy.connect().then((p) => {
  console.log("Connected", p.uri);
});

Replace socketproxy-server above with the hostname of your SocketProxy server.

Alternatives

localtunnel is a popular alternative for some similar use cases. Notable differences are that it is actually a full TCP tunnel while the SocketProxy client connects directly to an express/connect handler, so doesn't generate any extra connections on the client machine. SocketProxy was developed because localtunnel isn't able to encrypt TCP traffic, and requires the use of all of the server's ports. For high-throughput uses, localtunnel is likely quite a bit faster since it will use many TCP connections rather than a single multiplexed-via-json websockets connection.

License

See LICENSE.txt