Enable https on your local environment with nginx

nginx-https-local.md

enable https on your local environment

install mkcert and create certificates

brew install mkcert

mkcert -install

mkcert local.place-your-domain-here.com localhost 127.0.0.1 ::1

Two .pem files will be generated. rename them as domain.pem and domain-key.pem

add 127.0.0.1 local.place-your-domain-here.com to your /private/etc/hosts file

create nginx config file

touch nginx.conf

events {

}

http {
  server {
    listen 443 ssl;
    listen [::]:443 ssl;
    ssl_certificate ~/domain.pem;
    ssl_certificate_key ~/domain-key.pem;
    server_name local.place-your-domain-here.com;

    location / {
        proxy_pass http://localhost:3000;
        proxy_set_header Host $host;
        proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
    }
  }
}

run nginx

nginx -c nginx.conf -p .

now you can open https://local.place-your-domain-here.com

It works! But I get an "not safe" error from the browser

This is okay. You can add certificate to your browser or just ignore this warning. You are the one who generate this certificate and you have nothing to worry about ;) Also, make sure you use mkcert for testing and developing purposes, this is not suitable for production, and never share your rootCA-key.pem with anyone

My nginx server is on WSL Ubuntu. I tried mkcert in WSL and import RootCA.pem in the host machine but still gets an error. Then I run mkcert in Windows cmd and copy generated certs to WSL and the error goes away :)