nodejs

backloop.dev

Do SSL HTTPS requests on Localhost using a domain and SSL certificates pointing to your local environment.

https://<any subdomain>.backloop.dev/ → https://localhost/

Any subdomain of *.backloop.dev points to localhost!

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Exception: backloop.dev, which points to a page where you can download the certificates.

Why ?

backloop.dev solves mixed-content issues when developing a WebApp or Backend on local environement while accessing ressources on remote HTTPS sources.

The issue is often raised by the same-origin policy mechanism that restricts the loading of resources from another origin unless this can be allowed by sending correct Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS) headers.

Which anyway will fall-back on the must-have "non-mixed-content" (No HTTP & HTTPS)

But making requests to HTTPS APIs from HTTP sites on localhost would not be possible without changing security options on your browser, which is why backloop.dev provides SSL certificates with a full loopback domain, to let anyone benefit from a signed certificate on localhost.

Where are the certificates?

Certificates are not bundled with the npm package, but downloaded and updated from backloop.dev at installation and runtime, or manually with backloop.dev-update. To specify in which directory the certificates should be stored set the environement var BACKLOOP_DEV_CERTS_DIR.

If the certificates are outdated they are checked and updated at boot.

Usage

Installation

npm install backloop.dev [-g]

Add -g to use backloop.dev and backloop.dev-proxy globally.

Command line

(Don't forget to prefix commands with npx if not installed globally.)

Start a webserver serving the contents of a directory on https://whatever.backloop.dev:<port>/:

backloop.dev <path> [<port>]

Start a proxy on https://whatever.backloop.dev:<port>/
Note: proxy will add x-forwarded-proto: https to headers. This is to support express-session and other services and advertise it was served in https.

backloop.dev-proxy <target host>[:<target port>] [<port>]

Manually update the certificates:

backloop.dev-update

Certificate files

You can download the certificates files on backloop.dev for your own usage.

From a node app

ES6 Module

import httpsOptions from 'backloop.dev';
import https from 'https';

https.createServer(httpsOptions, (req, res) => {
  res.writeHead(200);
  res.end('hello world\n');
}).listen(8443);

CommonJS

const https = require('https');
const httpsOptionsAsync = require('backloop.dev').httpsOptionsAsync;

httpsOptionsAsync(function (err, httpsOptions) {
  https.createServer(httpsOptions, (req, res) => {
    res.writeHead(200);
    res.end('hello world\n');
  }).listen(8443);
});

Or with promises.

const https = require('https');
const httpsOptionsPromise = require('backloop.dev').httpsOptionsPromise;

(async () => {

  const httpsOptions = await httpsOptionsPromise();
  https.createServer(httpsOptions, (req, res) => {
    res.writeHead(200);
    res.end('hello world\n');
  }).listen(8443);

})();

The following is not recommended as it will crash your app if certificates are expired. Thus it will refresh them for your next boot ;).

const https = require('https');
const options = require('backloop.dev').httpsOptions();

https.createServer(options, (req, res) => {
  res.writeHead(200);
  res.end('hello world\n');
}).listen(8443);

Express

const https = require('https');
const httpsOptionsAsync = require('backloop.dev').httpsOptionsAsync;
const express = require('express');
const app = express();

// ...your code...

httpsOptionsAsync(function (err, httpsOptions) {
  https.createServer(httpsOptions, app).listen(8443);
});

VueJs

// consider  `await require('backloop.dev').httpsOptionsPromise()`
const backloopHttpsOptions = require('backloop.dev').httpsOptions();
backloopHttpsOptions.https = true;
backloopHttpsOptions.host = 'whatever.backloop.dev';

module.exports = {
  // ...your options...
  devServer: backloopHttpsOptions
};

Now vue-cli-service serve will be served on https://whatever.backloop.dev

ViteJs

File: vite.config.js

import { defineConfig } from 'vite';
import backloopHttpsOptions from 'backloop.dev';

export default defineConfig({
  server: {
    port: 4443,
    host: 'whatever.backloop.dev',
    https: backloopHttpsOptions
  },
  // ... //
});

Now npm run dev will be served on https://whatever.backloop.dev There is a ViteJS plugin that does the very same vite-plugin-backloop.dev.

Security

What if *.backloop.dev DNS A and AAAA entries are not pointing to 127.0.0.1 and ::1 but to another IP (malicious ones)? Then your HTTPS requests will not end-up on your machine, but on this malicious servers.

Even, if this is very unlikely to happend, you may want to be on the safe side by adding <what you need>.backloop.dev in your /etc/hosts file.

127.0.0.1 localhost whatever.backloop.dev ... 
::1 localhost whatever.backloop.dev ... 

Contributing

npm run lint lints the code with Semi-Standard.

Pull requests are welcome.

The code to generate, publish and renew the certificates is here on github

License

BSD-3-Clause