HostMatch

hostmatch is a developer tool to assign custom domain names (workproject.dev etc...) to local webservers (localhost:3000). Thus you can access webservers running on localhost by typing the corresponding domain name in your browser.

For example, petproject.dev --> localhost:1337 workproject.dev --> localhost:3000

It achieves this by running its own proxy server locally at port 80. Administrator privileges are required to start the proxy server (it needs to open port 80) as well as adding or removing domains (involves editing the hosts file).

Installation

npm install -g hostmatch

It should work in both Windows and POSIX based systems.

Commands

hostmatch start - Start the proxy server at port 80 (needs sudo)
hostmatch stop - Stop the proxy server
hostmatch status - Displays the current status of the routing server
hostmatch list - List all the active matches
hostmatch add <domain> <port> - Match domain to local server at port (needs sudo)
hostmatch add <domain> <dir> - Match domain to directory (hostmatch add example.com . will match example.com/hello.html to './hello.html') (needs sudo)
hostmatch remove <domain> - Remove domain

hostmatch is also aliased to hm.