Applied Go

Domains for local dev servers

I have a bunch of servers running locally, and I find it quite inconvenient (and inelegant) to access them as localhost:8081, localhost:9000, and so forth.

With Caddy, the amazing Web server written in Go, setting up “domains” for local servers is easy as pie.

Let's say you have a local server listening on port 9000. After installing Caddy, run

caddy reverse-proxy --from myserver.localhost --to :9000

and open https://myserver.localhost. Boom: your server at localhost:9000 answers!

Note the https protocol — Caddy even provides local TLS certificates. (Caddy generates and installs a CA root automatically on first invocation; you might have to enter your local user's password if the OS asks you to. And you might have to run caddy trust. I tested on macOS with a non-admin user with sudo privileges, and I did not need caddy trust, but your mileage may vary.)

If you want to proxy more servers this way, create a file named Caddyfile and enter host configuration like so:

myapp.localhost {
	reverse-proxy :9000
}

myhugoblog.localhost {
	reverse-proxy :1313
}

Repeat this pattern to add local servers as needed.

Then run

caddy

in the directory where you created the Caddyfile.

That's it! No messing around with DNS entries or TLS certificate files.