Serve Public

Serve any folder on your device with a Public URL.

You can share a folder, or serve up a static file website such as an SPA or React app.

If you want to share an actual server running locally instead such as a PHP/NodeJS site or an API, try Tunnelmole.

Prerequisites

The only real external dependency you need to be aware of is NodeJS 14+. Everything else will be taken care of by npm which comes bundled with NodeJS.

Installation

Once you have NodeJS installed, to install serve-public run the following.

npm install -g serve-public

Usage

Get a Public URL for any folder on your device, simply run the following

serve-public --path </path/to/your/folder>

If you are sharing a website, ensure you have a index.html file in your folder. Or, navigate manually to your HTML page from the folder listing.

You'll see output like

Local server listening on http://localhost:3000 # This is the port the server is listening to on localhost
http://vsqaam-ip-157-211-241-249.tunnelmole.com is forwarding to localhost:3000 # A public, plain HTTP url for your folder
https://vsqaam-ip-157-211-241-249.tunnelmole.com is forwarding to localhost:3000 # A public HTTPS url for your folder

These URLs are random and will be regenerated each time you launch serve-public.

By default the local port will be port 3000. To change this, pass the --port <port> parameter. For example, --port 1337 will make the port 1337.

Here's what it looks like if you are sharing a plain folder

Or a website, with index.html placed in the folder

Getting a custom subdomain, or a domain that does not change

Custom subdomains that do not change require a paid subscription from Tunnelmole, or self hosting your own Tunnelmole Service.

Once that is out of the way, run the following serve-public --path </path/to/your/folder> --domain mysite.tunnelmole.com

You'll see output like

Local server listening on http://localhost:3000
http://mysite.tunnelmole.com is forwarding to localhost:3000
https://mysite.tunnelmole.com is forwarding to localhost:3000

How it works

serve-public uses Tunnelmole as an npm dependency under the hood to get the Public URLs. It then starts a simple Express server with a couple of middlewares that serve up static files and folder listings.

When you hit the public URL, the request is forwarded through the tunnelmole servers to your local client, then to the express server serving up your folder. If that was a bit of a mouthful, heres a diagram:

Serving dynamic content from your own server

serve-public can't do this, but Tunnelmole can get a Public URL for any server that you have running. You could use it to share a back end API or a dynamic PHP website for example.

Contributing

This is a community project and contributions are welcome. See our document on Contributing for more info.