Localhost tunnels

A localhost tunnel establishes a connection between your local machine and a remote connection. The connection is intended to proxy traffic from a publicly-addressable IP address and URL to your local machine. Localhost tunnels are most useful for allowing a tester to connect to a server running on your local development system so they can try out an in-development application you are building but have not yet deployed.

Localhost tunnel services

There are numerous localhost tunnel services that have similar features. The following services are listed in order from ones I have had the most experience with to the ones I have not used.

  • ngrok is the service I use most often. It is easy and worth the small fee to upgrade your account with a few extra features such as fixed, customizable subdomains. There is also a Python wrapper for ngrok called pyngrok that makes it easy to programmatically access the ngrok client from Python applications.

  • Localtunnel is a localhost tunnel written in Node.js.

  • Burrow provides another service, albeit one that I have not used myself.

What to code now that you have a localhost tunnel?

I want to learn how to code a Python web application using a framework.

Show me a list of the best Python learning resources.

I want to know about working with data in Python.


Matt Makai 2012-2022