I built a VSCode extension: ngrok for VSCode

#vscode #ngrok #showdev #opensource

Over the Easter weekend, a four day weekend characterised by lockdowns all over the world, I decided to use the extra time I had at home to start a new project and learn a new skill. By the end of the weekend I was proud to release my first VSCode extension: ngrok for VSCode.

What’s that now?

ngrok is a command line tool built by Alan Shreve that you can use to expose your localhost server with a publicly available URL. It’s great for sharing access to an application running on your own machine, testing web applications on mobile devices or testing webhook integrations. For example, I’m a big fan of using ngrok to test my webhooks when I am working with Twilio applications.

VSCode is my current favourite text editor, built by Microsoft and based on JavaScript (well, mostly TypeScript).

As I was using VSCode last week I wondered if there was an extension that made it easier to use ngrok. I had a search and found one under development and one that started a web server as well as running ngrok. So I decided to build the extension I wanted to see in the marketplace.

What does it do?

With version 1 of the extension you can start an ngrok tunnel with either a port number or by choosing one of your named tunnels from your ngrok config file. There is one available setting, where you can set a custom path to a config file.

Once a tunnel is running you can then open the ngrok dashboard or close the tunnel.

All the commands are available from the VSCode command palette.

It’s simple so far, but I wanted to keep the scope small and get it released.

The code is all open source and you can find it on GitHub.

What’s next?

I would love for you to try the extension out, especially if you are already an ngrok user. If it’s useful then I am looking for feedback, bug reports and feature requests so I can continue to improve it.

One idea I have already is to provide a Status Bar Item or Tree View that can give more information on and control over currently running ngrok tunnels. I should probably work out how to write tests for the extension too.