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Start with the Runloop Quickstart to use the examples below.
When developing software on your Devbox, you will often want to expose local services running on your Devbox to the outside world. For example, you may want to have your agent start a local web server to serve a frontend application and then expose the live frontend to your users. Other examples include using tunnels:
  • to remotely collaborate on a frontend project,
  • test a web service,
  • access a Jupyter notebook running on your Devbox,
  • or access a local database running on your Devbox.
Let’s use Devbox tunnels to securely access ports on your Devbox over a simple url.

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Supported Protocols

Devbox tunnels support multiple protocols, making them suitable for a wide variety of applications:
  • HTTP/HTTPS: Standard web traffic for REST APIs, web applications, and static content
  • WebSockets: Real-time bidirectional communication for chat applications, live updates, and interactive features
  • Server-Sent Events (SSE): One-way real-time communication from server to client for live data streams and notifications
You will need to explicitly specify the hostname 0.0.0.0 within your service to expose ports to the outside world. Using other IP addresses or localhost is incompatible with tunnels.

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Setting up a tunnel

To set up a Devbox tunnel, first make any ports you will want to access available at Devbox creation time.
1

Create a Devbox with the ports you want to expose

Create a Devbox with the ports you want to expose.
devbox = await runloop.devbox.create(
  launch_parameters={
    available_ports=[4040]
  },
  entrypoint="python3 -m http.server 4040"
)
2

Create a tunnel to the port you want to expose

When your Devbox is created and running, you can now open a tunnel. Use the create_tunnel endpoint to create a unique URL to your Devbox.
tunnel = await devbox.net.create_tunnel(
  port=4040
)
print(tunnel.url)
Copy the url from the output above and open it in your browser to access the service running on your Devbox.
While the Devbox is active and the tunnel is open, the URL now has remote access to this port of your Devbox. Treat with care.