Add subdomain to localhost URL - http

Question

I am writing an web application that behaves differently depending on a url prefix. The format is something like:
https://myprefix.mycompany.com
The web app behaves differently based on myprefix. My web app extract that part from the URL and act on that.
However, when I test on my local, I use an localhost address:
https://localhost:1234
I counldn't do something like:
https://myprefix.localhost:1234
What is the best way for me to test this scenario?
Many thanks

Answer 1

Unfortunately, because localhost is not a proper domain, you can't add a subdomain to it like that. You can, however, trick your computer into thinking it owns a specific domain and test things that way. For instance, if you have a UNIX-based operating system, open (as root) the file /etc/hosts and add a line (or lines) like this:
127.0.0.1 example.com
127.0.0.1 subdomain.example.com
Your computer will now treat both example.com and subdomain.example.com as belonging to itself. If you visit either in your web browser, they will work the same, in principle, as localhost, but your web server will see the correct domain in its Host header.

Answer 2

I'm not sure about same behaviour on windows. I'm working on linux mint.
You can use lvh.me:port as a local domain. You can imagine that your project is deployed on localhost:port on this domain.
Instead of sub.localhost:port you've to use sub.lvh.me:port
UPDATE
sub.localhost:port works on Chrome.
Note: Firefox automatically adds www. at the beginning of entered domain that can cause problems with subdomains testing

Answer 3

For Windows users, based on this answer and per this comment, you can achieve this by adding ports to localhost via the hosts file that resides at this path:
C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts
And append lines like the following to it:
127.0.0.1 example.com
127.0.0.1 subdomain.example.com

Answer 4

One-Line Solution for Windows
Open PowerShell as Administrator and run the following command, replacing sub.mydomain.com with whatever you want.
"`n127.0.0.1 sub.mydomain.com" | Out-File C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts -encoding ASCII -append
Breakdown:
`n - newline
127.0.0.1 - loopback address
sub.mydomain.com - domain name
| Out-File C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts - pipe the string to the hosts
-encoding ASCII - correct encoding
-append - append to end of file (important!)

Answer 5

You should be using the .test domain for things like that. That is what .test is for. localhost is not supposed to have any subdomains.
To do so violates the approved RFC standards. localhost has an A record and in IPv6 environments, an AAAA record. All other DNS record types, including SOA are forbidden.
Without an SOA record, it cannot be a zone apex that has sub-records, so no subdomains nor delegations are permitted. Even the recent RFC draft titled Let localhost be localhost is consistent with this.

Answer 6

https://myprefix.mycompany.localhost:1234
This should do the trick. Because localhost is a top-level-domain, it behaves like a .com in production code.

Answer 7

It took me a bit of time to find public wildcard DNS domains pointing to localhost so I'm leaving it here for future reference.
The domain that worked for me is localtest.me. That domain and its sub-domains resolve to 127.0.0.1 and ::1.
For example:
$ host localtest.me
localtest.me has address 127.0.0.1
localtest.me has IPv6 address ::1
$ host some-sub-domain.localtest.me
some-sub-domain.localtest.me has address 127.0.0.1
some-sub-domain.localtest.me has IPv6 address ::1
A maintained list of other public wildcard DNS domains that point to localhost can be found in this Gist.

Answer 8

From WSL in Windows:
First navigate to /mnt/c/Windows/System32/drivers/etc(Navigate cause, you may find more interesting files. Don't play here, but see what do they do)
Then do nano hosts(add at very bottom)
127.0.0.1 random.com
127.0.0.1 auth.random.com