Creating a local custom host name instead of localhost?

Question

Currently, my flask app runs locally on:

http://localhost:5000/some_page

How could I create a local custom location for my app like:

http://myappname/some_page

Sort of like a local domain name. Is this possible at all? Any pointers would be great.

Answer 1

In order for the browser to resolve this custom name, you will need to add an alias to your /etc/hosts file. It probably already contains a line about 127.0.0.1, in which case you just add your alias to the list

127.0.0.1 localhost localhost.localdomain myappname

You can then change the server name in the app's config to make it explicitly use this name.

app.config['SERVER_NAME'] = 'myappname:5000'

Only privileged programs (run as root or with sudo) can bind to low ports such as 80, so you will still have to use a high port number.