The name of the project obviously originates from the concept of localhost, a reference that allows direct access to the resources hosted locally, on the machine in use. lcl.host is a new free tool for web developers that allows you to configure and use HTTPS locallyin a really simple and effective way.
Thanks to lcl.hostyou can make use of a secure browser during the development and testing phase of your Web applications which corresponds to theproduction environment. This way you can remove any bugs before they cause problems when you upload the project to a server cloud.
Test applications in development with lcl.host
By installing a solution like lcl.host, it takes just two minutes to switch your app to HTTPS.
Anchor plays the role of Certification Authority (CA) private to manage data exchange securely through the TLS protocol.
The Anchor developers say that before lcl.host they were used self-signed certificateswhich however had quite a few disadvantages:
- All team members had to manually manage self-signed certificates.
- Self-signed certificates had to be manually added to each store on each individual device (in Windows, press
Windows+Rthen type certmgr.msc). - I dominate
app.localhostto which the self-generated digital certificate was corresponded could not be recognized on all systems. It was therefore necessary to modify the HOSTS file or use a dedicated DNS server for software development purposes.
How lcl.host works
A project like lcl.host helps to put the problems briefly summarized above behind us.
Relying on an external domain allows the provisioning and the automatic renewal of certificatesovercoming anachronistic and problematic manual processes.
Web programmers can finally take advantage of domain names that simply work anywhere, without the need to set up custom “ad hoc” configurations.
Among the main benefits is also the fact that you are faced with a context completely comparable to the production one, without the well-known defects of the localhost context.
lcl.host works excellently with any configuration, even using containers.
Furthermore, the quick setup and included features free users from having to interface with certificates and configuring data encryption solutions.
How to install and start using lcl.host
Per configurare HTTPS in a development environment, simply, quickly and reliably, just install the CLI tools suite (command-line interface) of Anchor, start lcl and follow the instructions:
brew install anchordotdev/tap/anchor
anchor lcl
Users who register a account Anchor, they automatically obtain a certificate that can be used locally. The dedicated private CA ensures maximum portability between development environments and remains completely free, usable with an unlimited number of development apps.
The Anchor CA has some restrictions: it can only issue certificates for subdomains of lcl.host and localhost: but that’s all you need for local development.
The command anchor lcl mkcert It is the easiest way to get certificates without any difficulty.
All subdomains of lcl.host they resolve to 127.0.0.1, the same address as localhost, and work even without HTTPS.