ngrok Example

ngrok is an extremely easy way to expose your HTTP application to the internet. This is useful when doing development or wanting to share something with a colleague or a customer for a period of time. For developers bringing new projects to life, this is free.

This is a simple example of using ngrok with a Golang HTTP server.

This content is also available on my blog.

If you haven’t already done so, sign up for a free ngrok account.

Download ngrok

Download ngrok here. Unzip it and move it to somewhere in your path.

Authenticate ngrok

Prior to using ngrok, you’ll need to authorize it.

Your authorization token can be retrieved from ngrok’s site here.

In your terminal, add your auth token to your ngrok configuration:

$ ngrok config add-authtoken YOUR_TOKEN_FROM_NGROK_HERE

Build the web server

Clone my code repository and cd into it.

$ git clone https://github.com/FulcrumOps/ngrok-example.git
$ cd ngrok-example

In this repository, get the dependencies you need and build the simple server binary.

$ go get
$ go build -o bin/server

Run the server

$ bin/server
Starting server on port 8000 ...

In a separate terminal, see the server running:

$ curl localhost:8000/foo/bar
Endpoint requested: /foo/bar

Now, fire up ngrok and point to the server:

$ ngrok http 8000
ngrok                                                                        

Session Status                online
Account                       Pete Emerson (Plan: Free)
Version                       3.3.1
Region                        United States (us)
Latency                       39ms
Web Interface                 http://127.0.0.1:4040
Forwarding                    https://d6b3-208-65-167-238.ngrok-free.app -> http://localhost:8000

Note the Forwarding URL (https://d6b3-208-65-167-238.ngrok-free.app). We can now use that endpoint from anywhere on the internet to access your server.

In a fresh terminal you can curl your server via the external endpoint, showing that your server is indeed available to the world:

 $ curl -s 'https://d6b3-208-65-167-238.ngrok-free.app/foo/bar'
Endpoint requested: /foo/bar