This little PHP-script updates your project's .env files with the URL for the tunnels that have been set by your local ngrok install. For instance, to use on a Laravel 5 (development) environment.
Often 3rd party integration with your project, utilizes webhooks to callback to your app. E.g. payment providers that signal a transaction has been fully processed.
In production environments such endpoints are often exposed publicly through a fixed public IP.
However, on a development/test environment your are likely 'hidden' behind a NAT-device or change internetconnections when working at different locations.
This is where ngrok comes into play wonderfully: it assigns a dynamic URL for your current connection that'll then be acccessible by the outside world. Since it sets up a tunnel, there is no need for upnp/portfowarding/NAT rules.
On making API calls from your app, you can often specify which URL the webhook should call back on.
When testing/developing, you obviously want this to be addressed to your development PC/laptop as you can then further process the webhook as soon as it comes in.
Since the ngrok URL's change at every start, I wrote this script to reflect those changes in my .env files where I'd usually store my API/webhook config in.
Instead of hard-coding a webhook URL for your API call to use, add it to your .env like this:
NGROK_HTTP=
NGROK_HTTPS=
PAYMENTPROVIDER_URL=https://api.somepaymentprovider.com/pay
PAYMENTPROVIDER_KEY=somekindofauthenticationkey
PAYMENTPROVIDER_WEBHOOK=${NGROK_HTTPS}/hooks/payment
Note: Setting NGROK_HTTPS= and using it by specifying ${NGROK_HTTPS} is the key here.
After ngrok is running, start ngrok-dotenv-update.php by passing the path to your .env-file as an argument ($argv[1]).
Create a batch file that will start ngrok and update your project's .env.
@echo off
start "ngrok" /MIN "ngrok" http -host-header=myapp.url 80 & :: start ngrok
timeout 5 > NUL & :: allow ngrok a little time to setup its tunnels
php -f ngrok-dotenv-update.php "C:\path\to\myapp\.env" & :: update .env
Note: Make sure the location for ngrok.exe is set in your PATH environment variable.