HACKER Q&A
📣 domust

Remote access to self hosted (back end) software


A couple of years ago I've read about this concept (already forgot the name) of using self hosted data storage with cloud applications. Basically, you as a user own your data and only permit the cloud hosted web application to access it - not own it and manage in your place.

I was thinking of a similar concept, but in the context of mobile applications. The mobile application itself would be accessible via Google Play Store/App Store, but the backend part would be self hosted and upon opening the application you would have to specify how to access backend.

My question is how would I access the backend if it was hosted on let's say rpi running in the living room? It's not a problem as long as I'm within the home network, but I want seemless network transition without losing access when entering/leaving the house. I was told https://www.cloudflare.com/en-gb/products/zero-trust/access/ could be used for this, but to me it sounds a bit of an overkill to use it for an application which would never be used by more than a single digit amount of users. This looks more suitable: https://github.com/boringproxy/boringproxy but I still don't like it due to password and not exchanged in advance key (like ssh) authentication. Ideally I would want this accessible via Wireguard which shouldn't require any additional setup given a modern router.

Maybe there are better/other options I'm not aware? Let me know your opinions/thoughts.


  👤 rudasn Accepted Answer ✓
Maybe you're thinking something with couchdb and pouchdb, where the client can replicate to and from a cloud/hosted db and be able to work offline - in theory. It's very specific to that db combo though, very few, if any, apps use them as primary data store (afaik).

👤 Zetobal
If the app is secure open a port on your router and it's done?

👤 plasma
Tailscale