Smallweb

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Cloudflare Tunnel is a free service that allows you to expose your local server to the internet, without having to expose your local IP address.

Additionally, it provides some protection against DDoS attacks, and allows you to use Cloudflare's other services like Access.

Setup ​

  1. Make sure that you have a domain name that you can manage with Cloudflare.

  2. From your cloudflare dashboard, navigate to Zero Trust > Networks > Tunnels

  3. Click on Create a tunnel, and select the Clouflared option

  4. Follow the intructions to install cloudflared, and create a connector on your device.

  5. Add a hostname for your apex domain (ex: example.com), and use http://localhost:7777 as the origin service.

    Tunnel Configuration

  6. Do the same for your wildcard domain (ex: *.example.com). You'll need to then go to the DNS configuration of your domain, and add a CNAME record for your wildcard hostname, with a target of <tunnel-id>.cfargotunnel.com.

    DNS Configuration

  7. Add a new CNAME record for your wildcard hostname, with a target of <tunnel-id>.cfargotunnel.com.

DNS Configuration

Checking that your tunnel is running ​

Create a dummy smallweb app in ~/smallweb/example

sh
mkdir -p ~/smallweb/example
cat <<EOF > ~/smallweb/example/main.ts
export default {
  fetch() {
    return new Response("Smallweb is running");
  }
}
EOF

If everything went well, you should be able to access https://example.<your-domain> in your browser, and see the message Smallweb is running.

Optional Steps ​

  • You can protect your tunnel (or specific apps) with Cloudflare Access.