FireURL is a handy application that helps you share links easily between two devices. Recall that awkward moment when you want to open a web page that you're browsing on your phone to your computer in front of you; with FireURL you can now easily Fire the link to your computer from your phone.
Prerequisites
First you'll need to have a computer (Currently, FireURL Server supports Windows, Mac, and Linux) that has Python 2 installed. If you are running OSX, Python 2 should have it pre-installed.
(:warning: Avoid installing Python 3, FireURL only runs on Python 2)
Download the files needed
Next you'll need to download the FireURL Server python script onto your computer. [TBD: Link to tutorial]
Time to run the FireURL Server
After you've downloaded the script, run the script using the command:
python fireURL.pyThis will start a FireURL Server on port 8000.
Note: If you wish to specify the port that FireURL should listen on, you can use the command python fireURL.py 4444 Where 4444 is the port number that you specify.
Fire an URL to the computer! Using a GET request
The mechanism of FireURL is rather simple. The server (which sits inside your computer) will listen for a HTTP request that contains some formatted URL (web link). Once it has received the request, it will open up the link in the default browser (Chrome or Firefox, etc.)
There are many types of HTTP requests. GET, POST, PUT, DELETE are some of the common examples of HTTP requests. These requests, sent by a client will then be received and interpreted by the server in this case, open the URL sent by the client on the server computer's default browser.
FireURL Server listens only specifcally crafted GET and POST requests. It will not process other kinds of HTTP requests such as PUT and DELETE.
Making a GET request is suprisingly easy. We use it everyday when we browse the internet. Simply open a new browser window, type in an URL (Web link), http://google.com/ and hit enter, and congratulations! You've just made a GET request to the server google.com.
It works the same for FireURL Server, you'd type in the address of the FireURL Server, specify what URL you want it to open, and hopefully the server will understand and open the web page on your target computer. For example, if your FireURL Server's IP address is at 192.168.1.5, and you'd want the server to open up http://youtube.com/ for you. You'd then use this URL (Web link) in your browser: http://192.168.1.5/?url=youtube.com/
Neat! http://youtube.com/ will now be showing up on your server's browser. How awesome is that!
POST to the computer instead!
Using GET request is simple and easy to understand, however it is not as reliable as using POST request. The reason is because some speical characters in an URL may show up differently in a GET request per browser. For this reason, it's better to use POST request to avoid unexpected encoding of an URL.
In order to create a POST request to our FireURL Server, we cannot create it simply by browsing a URL like we did in GET request. Instead, we need to use an application that creates HTTP requests to our server. I'd recommend Postman for its simplicity and ease of usage. However you're welcome to use any other REST Clients available to you. (curl if you are comfortable with command line interface)
POST requests are similar to GET requests. They both need a server address, and the URL that you wish to open on the server. However instad of appending the URL at the end of the server's address like we did in our GET request, we need to pass some form-data in our POST request for FireURL Server to understand what we're trying to do. (Detailed on the difference between HTTP GET and POST)
In our POST request, we'd need to specify where we want the request to be sent, and what content (form-data) we'd like to send. Our POST request should look something like this:
If we send this request out, we'll see the web page opening on our server's computer! Neat!
Yes. Well sort of. Official client apps for FireURL are currently being developed. Here is the list of their repos:
- iOS: https://github.com/FireURL/FireURL-Client-iOS
- Android: TBD
These apps aim to open web links from your mobile device to computer quickly and easily. Please refer to instructions in those repos to find installation guides and usages.