Add local mac resolver post

content/blog/2020-01-03-setting-up-a-local-resolver-on-macos/index.md

@@ -0,0 +1,89 @@
+---
+layout: micropost
+date: '2020-01-03T21:45:00+00:00'
+title: The web without the web
+slug: the-web-without-the-web
+categories:
+- internet
+- web
+- dns
+- web development
+---
+
+For a good number of years I was using Basecamp's Pow for local web development
+and one of my favourite features was the in built local DNS resolver that meant
+that `*.dev` would resolve to `127.0.0.1`. This mean that I had a unique
+hostname for every site I was building and running locally which I have found
+incredibly useful.
+
+Unfortunately Pow no longer sees active development (the GitHub repo has been
+archived) so I wanted to see if I could set up the same kind of local resolver
+on my Mac without using it.
+
+It turned out to be pretty straightforward!
+
+<!--more-->
+
+Note: We're using `.localhost` instead of `.dev` because Google own the `.dev`
+TLD and in 2017 they added an HSTS rule to Chromium that forces any `.dev`
+domain to use HTTPS. As you can imagine, this is not ideal for local development
+so web developers everywhere had to adjust their setups.
+
+First of all we need to install Dnsmasq. This will handle the local name
+resolution. If you're using Homebrew this is dead simple:
+
+```bash
+$ brew install dnsmasq
+```
+
+Then we need to configure it to resolve any domain name that ends in
+`.localhost` to resolve to `127.0.0.1`.
+
+Uncomment the following line:
+```bash
+# /usr/local/etc/dnsmasq.conf
+conf-dir=/usr/local/etc/dnsmasq.d
+```
+
+Add the following file to the Dnsmasq configuration directory:
+```bash
+# /usr/local/etc/dnsmasq.d/localhost
+address=/.localhost/127.0.0.1
+```
+
+Start `dnsmasq` as root (It needs to be running as root to be able to bind to
+port 53):
+```bash
+$ sudo brew services start dnsmasq
+```
+
+Next we need to tell macOS about the local resolver.
+
+Add the following file (You will need to do this as `root`):
+```bash
+# /etc/resolver/localhost
+nameserver 127.0.0.1
+domain localhost
+search_order 1
+```
+
+And voila! Any domain ending in `.localhost` should now resolve to `127.0.0.1`.
+We can test this with a ping:
+```bash
+$ ping foobar.localhost
+PING foobar.localhost (127.0.0.1): 56 data bytes
+64 bytes from 127.0.0.1: icmp_seq=0 ttl=64 time=0.122 ms
+64 bytes from 127.0.0.1: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=0.262 ms
+64 bytes from 127.0.0.1: icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=0.281 ms
+```
+
+## So why is this useful?
+
+That's a very good question! Here's some of the reasons I've found:
+
+1. If you're developing an app that relies on a number of small services it can
+   be useful to differentiate them by domain.
+2. It makes OAuth callback URL's more readable.
+3. It's useful for external services that require a domain name to authenticate.
+   A good example of this is font services such as Typekit or Hoefler & Co.
+4. It just looks pretty up there in the URL bar!