Share your local application with the world in a snap.

NOTE: see http://localtunnel.me/ for an update on this project

As web developers we are usually sending screenshots, or deploying applications in servers just to show somebody a feature or something we are hacking.

I know that with actual CI processes this is very easy to setup; scripting, git hooks, etc, help a lot. BUT, eventually you don't want to publish your unfinished code (you do not even want to commit!). Just want to show something in YOUR machine ("it works in my machine" apply here for now :) ).

localtunnel is a tool that basically shares your local server to the world doing an encrypted connection between your machine and their servers (doing reverse port forwarding from their port 80 to your specified one).

So lets suppose we have our app in http://localhost:432 we will only need to do this:

 # localtunnel -k ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub 8080  
 This localtunnel service is brought to you by Twilio.  
 Port 8080 is now publicly accessible from http://4aj4.localtunnel.com ...  

and BAM! you can access your local app with your browser through http://4aj4.localtunnel.com

BADASS!

Links

• Tools i use everyday.
• localtunnel 
• source code in github.
• Google user group.
• SSH reverse port forwarding links:
• Bypassing corporate firewall with reverse ssh port forwarding
• Reverse SSH Tunneling