A lightweight cross-platform reverse proxy that routes incoming HTTP/HTTPS requests to backend servers.

TinyGate supports TLS certificates, SNI-based certificate selection, and optional per-domain HTTP to HTTPS redirection.

Configuration

[proxy_settings]

• listen_ip: IP for listening (0.0.0.0 for all interfaces).

• listen_port: Port for listening.

• listen_ssl_port: Port for listening HTTPS. Set 0 to disable HTTPS.

• worker_threads: The number of worker threads in the thread pool.

• [your.domain.com]: Targeted host.

• endpoint: Backend target in host:port format (example: 127.0.0.1:8080).

• tls_cert_file: Path to PEM certificate.

• tls_key_file: Path to PEM private key.

• force_ssl: HTTP requests for this domain are forced to HTTPS.

Example proxy.ini

[proxy_settings]
listen_ip = 0.0.0.0
listen_port = 80
listen_ssl_port = 443
worker_threads = 2

[localhost]
endpoint = 127.0.0.1:8080
tls_cert_file = 
tls_key_file = 
force_ssl = false

[example.com]
endpoint = 127.0.0.1:8081
tls_cert_file = certs/example.com.crt
tls_key_file = certs/example.com.key
force_ssl = true

ACME (Certbot / Let's Encrypt)

1. Issue a certificate

Replace with your real domain and email:

certbot certonly --standalone -d example.com -m you@example.com --agree-tos --non-interactive

--standalone needs port 80, stop TinyGate for this first time if TinyGate is already bound to port 80.

2. Use Certbot files with TinyGate

[example.com]
endpoint = 127.0.0.1:8081
tls_cert_file = /etc/letsencrypt/live/example.com/fullchain.pem
tls_key_file = /etc/letsencrypt/live/example.com/privkey.pem
force_ssl = true

3. Renew automatically and restart TinyGate only on change

TinyGate loads certificates at startup, so restart after successful renewal.

certbot renew --deploy-hook "systemctl restart tinygate"

If you run TinyGate in other way (Windows service, Docker, manual process), replace the restart command with your own equivalent.

Compilation

Linux

gcc -std=c23 -Wall -Wextra -pedantic main.c config.c -o tinygate -pthread -lssl -lcrypto

Windows

gcc -std=c23 -Wall -Wextra -pedantic main.c config.c -o tinygate.exe -pthread -lws2_32 -lssl -lcrypto