rlay-server

Rlay is a development tool that allows you to forward HTTP calls to your local machine through a server. Since rlay's client is connecting to the server, you don't need to open any ports on your local machine to make a local webapp available to the external world. It facilitates the development of web applications when another system needs to call a webhook in your system. It is an easy to deploy, self-hosted alternative to ngrok.

It is composed of two components:

• A server, that you deploy on a machine accessible to the internet, which will receive the HTTP calls, transfer them to the client, then forward the responses.
• A client, that you run on your local machine. It will connect to a) the distant server, b) whatever app you want on your local machine, and proxy the calls made to the server to your machine.

┌────────────────────────┐     ┌────────────────┐     ┌──────────────────┐
│     Local machine      │     │  Relay server  │     │   Other system   │
│    ───────────────     │     │ ────────────── │     │   ─────────────  │
│                        │     │                │     │                  │
│  App ◄── Rlay client ──┼─────┼►  Rlay server ◄┼─────┼─ External system │
│                        │     │                │     │                  │
└────────────────────────┘     └────────────────┘     └──────────────────┘

Rlay's code is on GitHub, as well as a Kubernetes chart, client and server are available on npmjs, and a docker image is published to dockerhub.

deployment

The recommended deployment is on any kubernetes server you would have dangling around. A helm chart is available in the server's directory, which contains an ingress and certificate.

setup

On the server: deploy rlay either with docker, npm, or using kubernetes. Set the environment variable RLAY_PASSWORD to whatever password you want, and RLAY_PORT to the port to be listened. Rlay will not start if a password is not provided.

On your local machine: npm install -g rlay, then set an environment variable RLAY_PASSWORD to your rlay password, and RLAY_HOST to your rlay server DNS, including the protocol (e.g. https://myrlayserver.mydomain.com).

using

• Start your local dev server, say it's a webapp listening on port 8080.
• Configure whatever remote service needs to call it to point to your rlay server (e.g. https://myrlayserver.mydomain.com)
• Start the rlay client: rlay --port 8080

From there on, when the remote service makes http calls, they will be forwarded to your local environment.

deploy to Azure

Rlay can be deployed to a free Webapp on Azure.

1. Create yourself a free Azure subscription, if you don't have one, then a webapp using Free linux hosting
2. deploy Rlay by configuring in the App Service configuration > Deployment Center > Settings > External Git repository. Don't use GitHub unless you forked the project and want to use this fork as a source. Use the App Service Build Provider as Build provider. Setup repo as https://github.com/cfe84/rlay.git , branch as main, then save.
3. Setup password. Go to the webapp settings > Configuration > Application Settings > add a new app setting called RLAY_PASSWORD, set whatever password you want.
4. Activate websockets. In the same screen, click on General Settings > Web sockets > on. Click Save.
5. In TLS/SSL settings, turn on "HTTPS only"

Navigate to your web app, after a few minutes it should show No client connected. Install the client on your computer. Set environment variables RLAY_PASSWORD to the same value as the webapp, and RLAY_HOST to the webapp's URL. Be sure to reload whatever terminal you are using to reload the environment. Launch rlay using rlay --port 8080 (use a port that returns something on your machine). Client should connect and display something like Connected to https://YOUR_WEB_APP.azurewebsites.net:443. Refresh your webapp in the browser, it should now forward requests to your client.