Sharing a project

Sometimes you want to show a client or a colleague what you’re working on, and they’re not in your network. No VPN, no port forwarding, no account somewhere: open More actions (⋯) in the header of a running project and pick Share publicly, and it gets a temporary public https address.

Behind the scenes Envoryx starts a Cloudflare quick tunnel (cloudflare/cloudflared) next to the project and shows you the address it got, something like https://<random-words>.trycloudflare.com. The address is random and changes every time you share. Because the tunnel goes through the proxy, the project’s rules apply here too, so a password, headers and redirects all work.

How long a share lasts

In the dialog you pick 15 minutes, 1, 4 or 24 hours; if you don’t, it’s one hour. The command line and the API take anything from 5 minutes to 24 hours. A share also ends early when the project stops, is renamed or deleted, or when you click End the share. While it runs, a green Shared badge sits in the project header; click it to see the address again. Recreating the application, for example after changing variables, doesn’t end it.

The host only needs outgoing connections for this: it has to reach Cloudflare on port 7844.

Anyone with the address gets in

A share is reachable from the internet without signing in, unless the project’s rules ask for a user name and password - and that’s exactly how you protect it. Share a staging copy rather than data that needs protecting. A project with an address allowlist can’t be shared.

One thing to keep in mind: an application that builds absolute links from APP_URL or ENVORYX_URL will still point those links at the local address.

From the command line and the API

envoryx project share shop --for 2h     # prints the public address
envoryx project share shop --status
envoryx project share shop --stop

Over the API it’s GET, POST ({"minutes": 60}) and DELETE on /api/v1/projects/{id}/share. Starting a share needs an admin token or user, ending one operate, and both end up in the audit log.