View random ngrok URL when run in background

Question

When I start an ngrok client with ./ngrok tcp 22 it runs in the foreground and I can see the randoming generated forwarding URL, such as tcp://0.tcp.ngrok.io:12345 -> localhost:22.

If I run in it the background with ./ngrok tcp &, I can't find any way to see the forwarding URL. How can I run ngrok in the background and still see the URL?

Answer 1

There are a couple of ways.

You can either:

1) Visit localhost:4040/status in your browser to see a bunch of information, or

2) Use curl to hit the API: localhost:4040/api/tunnels

Answer 2

This little Python (2.7) script will call the ngrok API and print the current URL's:

import json import os   os.system("curl  http://localhost:4040/api/tunnels > tunnels.json")  with open('tunnels.json') as data_file:         datajson = json.load(data_file)   msg = "ngrok URL's: \n' for i in datajson['tunnels']:   msg = msg + i['public_url'] +'\n'  print (msg)