node.js ko
LocalNode
LocalNode
by Return of the Starcraft
————————————
Share ANY web server on your LAN to the world
by visiting a site
(including firewalls & localhost)
NO INSTALLATION, NO SERVER CONFIGURATION
How is this different from localtunnel?
LocalNode requires no installation, configuration, and can proxy not just localhost, but any web server on your LAN!
Judging Instructions
Description
Web developers often work in a local environment, serving web applications off of their local machines as they code. This works well for solitary projects, but what happens when you need to share your work with somebody over the internet? What if you’re not ready to deploy your work, or you don’t have a server environment configured yet?
That’s where localno.de comes in. We provide a web-based proxy to allow you to serve your localhost off a publicly available subdomain on our site. Just host a static html file we provide, choose your subdomain name, and go. Your browser is your proxy; close the tab, and the subdomain is released.
Directions to judges
NOTE: Only chrome is supported for the web proxy. End users browsing the provided subdomain can use any browser they like.
- Start a web server on your local box (any port is fine).
- Navigate to http://localno.de/
- Download the localnode.html file linked to on the homepage.
- Serve the downloaded localnode.html statically from your local webserver.
- Give us the url to localnode.html on your local box. (When we successfully find it, the “Step 1” box will turn green.)
- Pick your desired subdomain. (If the subdomain is not in use, the “Step 2” box will turn green.)
- Hit the “Start” button to start the proxy. (We’ll confirm with an alert that the proxy has successfully started.)
- Open another browser or tab and browse to the subdomain you chose (http://yourname.localno.de/).
Your subdomain will be available to anyone on the internet as long as you keep the proxy tab and your local webserver running.
Who
CrabDude — Mountain View, CA
ChrisCinelli — Palo Alto, CA, United States
jdunck — SF
dgouldin — San Francisco, CA
How
Express, socket.io, forever, underscore, XHR2, postMessage, jQuery, Black Maple Hill Kentucky Straigh Bourbon.
Votes
Your Vote
Voting is now closed.
Other Votes
(11)
dylang
contestant- contestant
Serving a file is pretty liberal definition of “install”. We tried to keep to a definition that we thought would be acceptable to IT staff at big-corps, frequently a hurdle for things like localtunnel.
The limitations to scale are open sockets and secondarily bandwidth, pretty common bottlenecks for most node apps. Security is as good as your web app will allow minus support for https which could definitely be added.
Also (looks at Utility/Fun leaderboard) … I see what you did there. >:(
- contestant
Very suspect. Very shady vote. Last minute, puts your team immediately above us…
dylang
contestantThanks for the quick reply. I’ve reviewed 36 entries so far, that’s more than most judges it seems. I didn’t know about yours until seeing the leaderboard though. Next year we should do more publicity. The guy in first place did a ton on web sites, blog enties, twitter, irc, etc.
geradjudgeWow, this is so awesome. I’m going to use it all the time. Totally brilliant idea. Minus a star on completeness because it’d be nice to have the web proxy work on any browser.
- contestant
Unfortunately until all browsers support ArrayBuffer xhr response type or improve native binary support in javascript, browser support on the proxy side will not improve.
jacobquistjudgeVery interesting idea!
willconantjudgeThis could definitely become a useful tool. I ran into a situation where a redirect from my local server didn’t make it all the way back through localno.de. If you are interested in recreating the bug, let me know and I’ll show you the details.
- contestant
Thanks for the vote, Will.
Redirects are certainly a weak point in a web-based implementation. It might seem hard to believe, but XHR (both 1 and 2) actually follows 301/302 without ever reporting the location header back to the caller, making it impossible to accurately update the url on the consumer side. Believe me, we thought long and hard about the problem and didn’t come up with a solution that wouldn’t require cooperation on the local web server side, a deal killer for our use case.
In the end, we felt the advantages of having a completely web-based proxy outweighed the limitations of XHR to create a generally useful utility. We’re sorry you felt the result was below-average.
If the explanation above doesn’t describe what you saw, then yes we’d love more details!
toastdriven
contestant<3
erniehacksjudgeGreat concept – this has obvious utility for larger web dev teams. Installation was straightforward and well-documented. Nice wizard for getting started.
Apologies for the brief write up – your app simply makes sense and works well; it speaks for itself!
trycatcherjudgeNeat hack! I can see myself using this. Great job!
mcouzinet
contestant
allancajudgeAwesome. That is all.
therazorbladejudgeThis is pretty fantastic. Having to host the html document under the same server (e.g. port) is sometimes hard so it would be nice to be able to have it available on another port.
- contestant
Thanks Eran. It would be possible to do that only if the server you wish to share supplies CORS headers, I think, since we’re using XHR2 for the request from the downloaded page to your LAN-internal server.
Thanks, too, for your work on OAuth. :)
- therazorbladejudge
What I think would be really cool is a simple express middleware that adds the html route. This way, a simple npm install and two lines of code will add this to existing applications, making hosting the file trivial.
Even though the design can use some work, gave you 5 stars to boost the overall score because I think this is great.
jsjohnstjudgeNot sure if I will ever need this, but for someone who does, I can easily see it being a real lifesaver. Hoping eventually more browsers are supported for the proxy side. Great work!
- contestant
Hey, Jeremy.
Browser support on the proxy side is limited primarily by javascript’s binary support. In order to tunnel binary data using xhr and postMessage, we needed xhr2’s ArrayBuffer response type support. FF6 claims support, but in real testing only Chrome played nicely with it. We felt it was a reasonable limitation given that only developers will need to use the proxy page, and hopefully they’re already armed with a suite of browsers for testing purposes.
As to the app’s utility, we believe the lack of install requirement makes it more useful than alternatives and opens the door to those who may be unable to use any other solution due to restrictions from their IT department or elsewhere. The response we’ve received in the comments below seems to indicate that this is something people need and want, and we fully intend to keep it up and running.
- contestant
Jeremy, we’re pretty close in the utility and innovation categories. Looking at your voting history, do you think this really only has the utility of an app which didn’t work at all? :)
b00giZmjudgeThis is sooo awesome! I would totally use this in my development workflow! Congratulations on your idea. It’s really one of the cleverest I’ve seen so far. “Hut ab”, like we say here in Germany ;) This won’t reach the mainstream like some cute real-time multiplayer game, but a lot of developers might be willing to name their first-born son after you guys!
For the website: It’s pretty basic, the design is somewhat clunky and the user interaction could be a lot better. Hire some UX folks to optimize your user’s workflow and LocalNode will be a pretty big deal!
Also: +1 for having some basic (or maybe advanced) user authentication feature in the near future.
chrismatthieujudgeBrilliant!
jamespwright
contestantGot it working, was my own problem. Awesome idea and I’m jealous!
- contestant
Thanks for your vote, James. If you were able to connect but not to make requests, try refreshing the proxy page (localno.de). It looks like sometimes the response from the local webserver hits an edge case we didn’t see during the event. Nothing like usage to shake out the bugs. ;)
- contestant
The catches are 2: using Chrome and being able to host the localhost.html on the domain you want to share. As you have already noticed, we should have done a better job to make the UX smoother
Jaciones
contestantI totally will use this!
I second the vote that you keep this service running indefinitely!
Great job guys
drewblasjudgeThis will have a lot of utility going forward and is a very innovative approach to this problem! I truly hope you open-source or keep this service running!
- contestant
I couldn’t help but notice “a lot of utility” in your comment, and a 4/5 Utility score. ;P
jesusabdullah
contestantMan, that’s way neat! I kinda wish the front page explained more about what you were doing and why, though. Please either keep this service up and running post-KO or open-source it because I have a feeling I’ll find this hella useful sometime in the future.
farhadi
contestant
rauchgjudgeOne of the cleverest and most fascinating projects!
- contestant
A vote like that from the author of Socket.IO is very flattering! Thank you!
aaronblohowiak
contestantI am sick of futzing with ssh reverse port forwarding, ensuring that the appropriate ports are open on the bastion host, etc. This is a very convenient and cool tool… you should add HTTP basic auth for even more awesome ;)
- contestant
Sure! Thank you for the vote!
aashay
contestantWorks well and it’s certainly useful, but it requires a LOT of work on the user’s part, especially compared to Localtunnel (http://progrium.com/localtunnel/).
- contestant
Well, it is difficult to make it easier. With localnode you do not have to have ruby install or any specific technology except Chrome, and you absolutely do not have to type any shell command. Turning it on is as easy as connect to a url and turning it off is easy as closing a tab in the browser.
__mario__judgeI will be using this. The interaction could be streamlined as it feels a little clunky, but all in all a really good effort.
chapel
contestantDone before many times, but could be useful to some people.
Edit: Increased my Innovation vote just because he has a point.
mperham
judgeNice utility. I can see this being really useful for remote development and demos. Step 1 was a little confusing for me but the app worked perfectly once I figured it out.
patmeenanjudgeMostly works. There are issues with rewritten URLs sometimes being replaced by localhost but given the use case it’s certainly acceptable and a pretty cool hack.
luisivan
contestantGood idea!
firebus
contestant
chapel
Very cool idea. I think the “no install” isn’t totally true – we have to “install” the html proxy file, but it’s still better than installing a ruby gem. How will this thing scale and are you able to see everything that is proxied? That means no security, right?