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

@@ -1,88 +0,0 @@
----
-layout: post
-date: '2020-01-03T21:45:00+00:00'
-title: Setting up a local resolver on macOS
-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!