[Marc_Bryan]

Seriously, does PHP suitable for this?

It can be handled using a single go binary using pgrok which comes less the source code size and not to mention without any dependencies on almost all platforms!

This requires unnecessary things to bundle and too complex for some simple stuff. Mileage may vary though.

But just my views.

[mpociot]

My personal take on this was that it's for a lot of people a lot simpler to extend Expose, as it's written in PHP. It also uses ReactPHP as a foundation - which is battle-tested for many years.

[stickfigure]

Looks like that is a reference to this:

https://github.com/jerson/pgrok

...which does look useful indeed.

[jaden]

Thanks! It even has a docker container for easy deployment.

[Phenix88be]

Well it's working and a lot of people already have a PHP server they can use to host it.

I don't even know how to run a Go server.

[dirtnugget]

You don't need to, comes as a compiled binary. That's one of the beauties of Go

[sudders]

You'd be surprised how PHP has evolved in the last couple of years. With frameworks like ReactPHP you can really code anything you want in PHP.

[sradman]

After reading the architecture post [1] referenced in the comment by mpociot [2], I’d say PHP is more “suitable” for the server-side if you choose to self-host the Open Source code rather than use the service.

These tunneling services use a client-server architecture with the server-side running on a public IP address. A static binary written in Go, like pgrok, is ideal for the client-side. On the server-side, you want an app server that is both common and can dynamically load a module. A dedicated Go server makes sense if you are building a service but not if you want to add functionality to an existing app server with a public domain name.

[1] https://pociot.dev/28-introducing-expose-an-easy-to-use-tunn...

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23554459

[Thaxll]

Except the PHP version only works with HTTP, Ngrok works with any TCP protocol which is much more powerful, hence why you don't want the weird PHP model with it modules and HTTP server.

[jaden]

Is there a separate Go pgrok, or was that a typo?

The reason for asking is I'd like to find a self-hosted ngrok solution for development.