Proof-of-concept code to expose a local HTTP server over the cloud using Ruby's stdlib socket libraries.
I started by building a basic understanding of the HTTP protocol with:
http_server.rb: simple HTTP server that responds to basic GET requests with the local time.proxy.rb: simple HTTP proxy that forwards requests to another host.
Next up, I built a tunnel client and server inspired by ngrok to expose a local HTTP server over the cloud without needing port forwarding:
tunnel_server.rb: exposes two external sockets: control and data. Control is used by remote servers to self-register with the tunnel. Data is used by regular HTTP clients to transparently call the remote servers over the cloud.tunnel_client.rb: self-registers with the tunnel server to handle reqeusts for a given domain.
An indirect goal is to have a bare-minimum setup with regards to libraries, deployment, hosting, etc. I opted to host things in a plain EC2 box and deploy using a simple bash script that runs commands over SSH.
$ bundle install
$ ruby proxy.rb 8088
$ ruby http_server.rb
$ ruby tunnel_server.rb
$ ruby tunnel_client.rb 'http://localhost/' localhost 8080
$ curl localhost
$ curl localhost --proxy localhost:8088
$ curl localhost --proxy ec2-34-210-221-34.us-west-2.compute.amazonaws.com:8080
./deploy.sh