Cloudflare Tunnel is a free service that allows you to expose your local server to the internet, without having to expose your local IP address.

Additionally, it provides some protection against DDoS attacks, and allows you to use Cloudflare's other services like Access.

Setup

  1. Make sure that you have a domain name that you can manage with Cloudflare.

  2. Install smallweb on your server, and register it as a service.

    // install deno
curl -fsSL https://deno.land/install.sh | sh

// install smallweb
curl -sSfL https://install.smallweb.run | sh

// register smallweb as a service
smallweb service install

// make sure that the server service is running
smallweb service status

  3. Set the domain field in your smallweb config to your domain name.

# open the smallweb config in your default editor
smallweb config

  1. From your cloudflare dashboard, navigate to Zero Trust > Networks > Tunnels

  2. Click on Create a tunnel, and select the Clouflared option

  3. Follow the intructions to install cloudflared, and create a connector on your device.

  4. Add a wildcard hostname for your tunnel (ex: *.<your-domain>), and use http://localhost:7777 as the origin service.

    Tunnel Configuration

  5. Do the same for your apex domain, if you want to manage it using smallweb.

  6. Copy the tunnel ID, and go to Websites > DNS > Records.

  7. Add a new CNAME record for your wildcard hostname, with a target of <tunnel-id>.cfargotunnel.com.

DNS Configuration

Checking that your tunnel is running

Create a dummy smallweb app in ~/smallweb/example

mkdir -p ~/smallweb/example
CAT <<EOF > ~/smallweb/example/main.ts
export default {
  fetch() {
    return new Response("Smallweb is running", {
      headers: {
        "Content-Type": "text/plain",
      },
    });
  }
}
EOF

If everything went well, you should be able to access https://example.<your-domain> in your browser, and see the message Smallweb is running.

Optional Steps

  • You can protect your tunnel (or specific apps) with Cloudflare Access.