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Using HTTPS for local development

Generate certificates​

brew install mkcert
# Create and install a local trusted CA
mkcert -install

# Generate certificates
mkcert 127.0.0.1

Start server with certificates​

Use http-server as an example:

npx http-server --tls \
                --cert 127.0.0.1.pem \
                --key 127.0.0.1-key.pem \
                -o

By using -o, http-server will open https://127.0.0.1:8080 in browser automatically.


Advanced​

Local DNS mapping​

Add the following line into /etc/hosts

127.0.0.1 example.dev

Reverse proxy​

Let's say there's a service running at http://localhost:3000, we don't have control for its tls config. So we are going to start another server to reverse proxy the previous one.

Here we use mitmproxy to reverse proxy

brew install mitmproxy

📌 Since mitmproxy requires the certs file to contain the certificate and its corresponding key, when using mkcert to generate the certificate, the two need to be generated in the same file.

mkcert -cert-file ./example.dev.pem \
       -key-file ./example.dev.pem \
       example.dev

Run reverse proxy at 443 port

mitmproxy --listen-port 443 \
          --mode reverse:http://localhost:3000 \
          --certs example.dev.pem

https://example.dev is working now