How to create a public url for a Webapp

Question

I have been given an assignment for User registration and login using Spring boot. Front end I have used thymeleaf.I have developed the application in my localhost.

Below are the deliverable

Deliverables
  ● Source code ---- Done with GitHub
  ● Public working url of the webapp --- How to do???
  ● Tests - unit and integration tests. you may also choose to use a ci ---- Done 

I would like to know how to create a public working URL for a project developed on localhost.

Answer 1

This process is called deployment . You may use Heroku, just follow the instructions . At the end, you will get an URL like http://my-lovely-app.herokuapp.com/ which is public and working.

Answer 2

to answer this question, one needs first to understand an overview of an http(s) request lifecycle:

1. user enters an URL in his browser: https://some.domain:8080/request/path?param1=value1&param2=value2
2. the browser splits the URL into protocol scheme ("https"), server DNS name ("some.domain"), port (8080), request path ("/request/path") and query-string ("param1=value1&param2=value2"). If a port is omitted, the default port for the given protocol is assumed (80 for HTTP, 443 for HTTPS, etc)
3. the browser performs a DNS lookup to translate server DNS name to an IP address.
4. the browser makes a TCP connection to server's IP address (in theory HTTP can also use UDP, but it is rarely used, so we will skip this case)
5. if HTTPS was used, the browser and the server perform TLS handshake during which, among others, they exchange and verify each other's SSL/TLS certificate chains (usually it's only server presenting its certs and the browser verifying them, but you can also install client certificate and a key in your browser)
6. the browser sends the HTTP request over TLS (in case of HTTPS) or over bare TCP (in case of HTTP) to the server.
7. the server running software appropriate to execute your app routes the request to it to obtain a response that it will send back to the browser.

Points 1, 2 and 6 do not require any setup from you side.

• For point 3 to work, you need to have a proper DNS record on some public DNS server.
• For point 4 to work, your server needs to have a public IP address assigned by an ISP.
• For point 5 to work, your server needs to have installed a valid SSL/TLS certificate issued by some certificate authority (you can skip it if you need only HTTP)
• For point 7 to work, your server needs to have appropriate software and your app installed similarly as your local dev machine.

There are a lot of services available that provide all 3 or some subset of them for you, some of them even for free up to some capacity.

Let's start with a server and an IP address:

• the most hardcore and low-level approach is to buy a public IP from your ISP and host your app on your local machine. this is not recommended however because of availability issues: whenever there is any network or power outage or if you turn off your machine, your app will be down. other solutions provide much better level of service (they have redundant power sources, internet connections and staff making sure that everything works 24/7)
• a bit higher level approach is to buy a virtual or dedicated server from some hosting company (search the web for "VPS", "dedicates server" or "VM hosting" to find one in your area. Well know global ones are for example Google Cloud Compute Engine, AWS EC2, M$ Azure, OVH). These companies will provide for you a server with a public IP, full administrative access (via SSH usually) and some guarantees on it's availability (usually ranging from 99% to 99.99% -> the more 9s the more expensive it is). After that you will need to install and configure all necessary software to run your app on such server. These companies often offer DNS entry in their subdomain and an HTTPS ceritficate in a package for a small to even zero fee. Many of them also offer packages containing a separate domain of your choice and sometimes a certificate.
• the most high level solution is a cloud app service (like mentioned in the other answer Heroku, AWS Beanstalk, Google App Engine, kubernetes cluster etc). These services will provide a configurable size pool of instances hosting your app with some load balancing in front of them. This will make your app easy to scale and have a very high availability rate. This is the best solution in most cases: just make sure that the given service provider supports technology stack required by your app. Again, companies providing such services often have packages with DNS entries and HTTPS certificates.

If you need to buy a DNS domain separately (you didn't like any of the packages offered by the server provider) just search for "DNS names" or "domain names" and you will find a lot of resellers. These resellers will provide you a console where you can bind IP address of your server to the DNS name.

Finally if you need to obtain SSL/TLS certificate, you can also search for providers on the web or you can use free automatic certs from https://letsencrypt.org/

That's pretty much it.

Answer 3

Just go to the command line and navigate to your program by typing “cd (the path to your web app)”. Then in the command line type “gcloud app deploy”. Then click on the link to your site.