Baemin Unveils 'ITDA', a Tunneling Proxy for Checking Local Web Development in the App Without Deployment

Baemin has a hybrid structure combining a native app and webview, which caused inefficiencies during web development, requiring complex procedures such as beta deployment and cache invalidation. To solve this, the company developed 'ITDA' (Instant Tunnel for Development Apps), a tunneling-based proxy system optimized for the internal environment.

Choosing a Traffic Switching Method

After reviewing three methods for switching traffic to the development environment, Baemin adopted the 302 Redirect method using CloudFront Function (CFF).

• CFF Rewrite: A method that only changes the internal destination; rejected because it was difficult to meet security requirements
• In-app host routing: A method that branches at the app's native layer; rejected because adding a domain required app modification and deployment
• CFF Redirect: Identifies requests intended for ITDA and directs them to re-request the proxy, clearly separating traffic without app modification; adopted

How 'ITDA' Works

'ITDA' establishes a tunnel by pre-establishing a WebSocket connection between the developer's local computer and the ITDA proxy.

1. Request identification: When a user selects the ITDA profile in the beta app, CFF checks the remote_config_profile value in the request header.
2. Delivering routing information: For requests intended for ITDA, routing information is included in a cookie and 302 Redirected to the proxy.
3. Tunnel matching: The proxy compares the information in the cookie with registered routing rules to find the tunnel connected to that developer's local server and forwards the request.
4. Multiplexing: Within a single WebSocket tunnel, a unique ID is assigned to each request to efficiently handle various resources such as HTML, JS, and CSS.