Exposing a web service with Cloudflare Tunnel

Summary

There are lots of ways to host a web service.You might want to rent a VPS, Dedicated Server, or embrace full serverless and write your application for a service like Cloudflare WorkersYou might want to use Docker, k8s, LXD, or any other manner of deploying your services.You might have a complex setup to proxy and serve traffic through your IP.But sometimes you might not have it all figured out. You might want to run your service in your home on that one old laptop you have lying around, or you might be worried about forwarding your IP and connections to the world without properly securing them. Setting it all up sounds like a hassle, right?This is where I believe a hidden gem of Cloudflare comes out to shine.Cloudflare Tunnel is an extremely innovative product by Cloudflare to seamlessly protect your web server from ever being directly targeted or exposed, while still allowing you to host your applications like normal. Ensure your server is safe, no matter where it’s running: public cloud, private cloud, Kubernetes cluster, or even a Mac mini under your TV. ~ CloudflareEven with the best firewall in the world, you still have machines exposed to the public Internet.But what if you could host a web service with no ports exposed? Well, you can! Cloudflare Tunnel makes a persistent outbound connection (a tunnel!) between your server and Cloudflare's nearest datacenter. All the traffic to your domain flows through this outgoing tunnel and connects to your server through the protection of Cloudflare. This also has the benefit of being seamlessly encrypted, so you don't have to worry about a thing when it comes to the security of your web service.If you, like me, think that sounds amazing, read on to get started creating your own tunnel.Getting startedNote: There is now an easier way to create and manage tunnels through the Cloudflare Zero Trust dashboard.You can check out how to do that on the Cloudflare developer documentation.For this walkthrough I will assume you are o...