A long time ago before the world of Visual Studio’s Integrated Web Server and
.NET you had to test web sites a bit more “manually”. Here is one trick that is
a somewhat lost art.
If you want to test your web application and/or web service (very handy trick
for web services) for some reason you need it to be at a specific URL, such as
http://www.testingURL.com. You will need to assign a separate IP address for
your web site/webservice.
On windows servers and desktops, you can modify the “hosts” file (note there
is no file extension). If you have not modified this file it should look like
the following:
# Copyright (c) 1993-1999 Microsoft Corp.
#
# This is a sample
HOSTS file used by Microsoft TCP/IP for Windows.
#
# This file contains
the mappings of IP addresses to host names. Each
# entry should be kept on an
individual line. The IP address should
# be placed in the first column
followed by the corresponding host name.
# The IP address and the host name
should be separated by at least one
# space.
#
# Additionally, comments
(such as these) may be inserted on individual
# lines or following the
machine name denoted by a ‘#’ symbol.
#
# For example:
#
#
102.54.94.97 rhino.acme.com # source server
#
38.25.63.10 x.acme.com # x client host
127.0.0.1 localhost
To add a new entry simply type the ip address of the actual location of the
test web site/web service you are working with (ex. 222.22.22.222). And then
type the “fake” name of the URL (ex. testingURL.com)
With the above information your entry into the “hosts”:
222.22.22.222 testingURL.com
Once you save this file all requests for testingURL.com will now go to the ip
address 222.22.22.222.
The beauty of this solution is that you can bind a WS call to your production
web service while developing and all requests get routed to your test web
service! Once in production, all the calls will be routed to your production web
server.
On Windows 2003 and XP the “hosts” file is located at -
C:\windows\system32\drivers\etc
