hotel

Start apps from your browser and use local domains/https automatically

Tip: if you don't enable local domains, hotel can still be used as a catalog of local servers.

Hotel works great on any OS (macOS, Linux, Windows) and with all servers :heart:

• Node (Express, Webpack)
• PHP (Laravel, Symfony)
• Ruby (Rails, Sinatra, Jekyll)
• Python (Django)
• Docker
• Go
• Apache, Nginx
• ...

To all the amazing people who have answered the Hotel survey, thanks so much <3 !

v1.2.3

• Fixes: Update npm badge/link to scoped package.

v1.2.2

• Fixes: Define bin as an object to avoid npm publish warnings.

v1.2.1

• Fixes: CONNECT proxy now waits for server readiness and ensures servers start when a port is already assigned.

v1.2.0

• New Features: restart and open commands.
• Improvements: CI with GitHub Actions, pnpm support.
• Fixes: Node 18+ compatibility (IPv4/IPv6).

v1.1.0

• Breaking Change: Default TLD is now .local instead of .localhost.
  • Reason: Modern browsers (Chrome M71+) enforce implicit proxy bypass rules for localhost and *.localhost, forcing them to resolve to 127.0.0.1 and bypassing any PAC or proxy configuration. This makes .localhost unusable for dynamic proxying without complex user configuration.
  • Reference: Chromium Proxy Bypass Rules
  • Migration: If you have a ~/.hotel/conf.json, you can remove the "tld": "localhost" entry to use the new default, or explicitly set "tld": "local".

v1.0.0

• Fix invalid args type on Node v14

v0.8.0 upgrade

.localhost replaces .dev local domain and is the new default. See https://ma.ttias.be/chrome-force-dev-domains-https-via-preloaded-hsts/ for context.

If you're upgrading, please be sure to:

1. Remove "tld": "dev" from your ~/.hotel/conf.json file
2. Run hotel stop && hotel start
3. Refresh your network settings

Support

If you are benefiting from hotel, you can support its development on Patreon.

Video

• Starting apps with Hotel - Spacedojo Code Kata by Josh Owens

Roadmap 🚀

We are actively working on modernizing Hotel! Here is what's coming next:

• CLI Enhancements: New restart and open commands.
• Proxy Improvements: Support for self-signed certificates and better WebSocket handling.
• Modern Web UI: Complete rewrite of the frontend using Vite and React 18.

Welcome PRs! Check out openspec/changes for details.

Features

• Local domains - http://project.local
• HTTPS via local self-signed SSL certificate - https://project.local
• Wildcard subdomains - http://*.project.local
• Works everywhere - macOS, Linux and Windows
• Works with any server - Node, Ruby, PHP, ...
• Proxy - Map local domains to remote servers
• System-friendly - No messing with port 80, /etc/hosts, sudo or additional software
• Fallback URL - http://localhost:2000/project
• Servers are only started when you access them
• Plays nice with other servers (Apache, Nginx, ...)
• Random or fixed ports

Install

npm install -g @yicone/hotel && hotel start

Hotel requires Node to be installed, if you don't have it, you can simply install it using one of the following method:

• https://github.com/creationix/nvm nvm install stable
• https://brew.sh brew install node

You can also visit https://nodejs.org.

Quick start

Local domains (optional)

To use local .local domains, you need to configure your network or browser to use hotel's proxy auto-config file or you can skip this step for the moment and go directly to http://localhost:2000

See instructions here.

Add your servers

# Add your server to hotel
~/projects/one$ hotel add 'npm start'
# Or start your server in the terminal as usual and get a temporary local domain
~/projects/two$ hotel run 'npm start' 

Visit localhost:2000 or http(s)://hotel.local.

Alternatively you can directly go to

http://localhost:2000/one
http://localhost:2000/two

http(s)://one.local
http(s)://two.local 

Popular servers examples

Using other servers? Here are some examples to get you started :)

hotel add 'ember server'                               # Ember
hotel add 'jekyll serve --port $PORT'                  # Jekyll
hotel add 'rails server -p $PORT -b 127.0.0.1'         # Rails
hotel add 'python -m SimpleHTTPServer $PORT'           # static file server (Python)
hotel add 'php -S 127.0.0.1:$PORT'                     # PHP
hotel add 'docker-compose up'                          # docker-compose
hotel add 'python manage.py runserver 127.0.0.1:$PORT' # Django
# ...

On Windows use "%PORT%" instead of '$PORT'

See a Docker example here..

Proxy requests to remote servers

Add your remote servers

~$ hotel add http://192.168.1.12:1337 --name aliased-address
~$ hotel add http://google.com --name aliased-domain 

You can now access them using

http://aliased-address.local # will proxy requests to http://192.168.1.12:1337
http://aliased-domain.local # will proxy requests to http://google.com

CLI usage and options

hotel add <cmd|url> [opts]
hotel run <cmd> [opts]

# Examples

hotel add 'nodemon app.js' --out dev.log  # Set output file (default: none)
hotel add 'nodemon app.js' --name name    # Set custom name (default: current dir name)
hotel add 'nodemon app.js' --port 3000    # Set a fixed port (default: random port)
hotel add 'nodemon app.js' --env PATH     # Store PATH environment variable in server config
hotel add http://192.168.1.10 --name app  # map local domain to URL

hotel run 'nodemon app.js'                # Run server and get a temporary local domain

# Other commands

hotel ls     # List servers
hotel rm     # Remove server
hotel open   # Open server in browser
hotel restart # Restart server
hotel start  # Start hotel daemon
hotel stop   # Stop hotel daemon

To get help

hotel --help
hotel --help <cmd>

Port

For hotel to work, your servers need to listen on the PORT environment variable. Here are some examples showing how you can do it from your code or the command-line:

var port = process.env.PORT || 3000
server.listen(port)

hotel add 'cmd -p $PORT'  # OS X, Linux
hotel add "cmd -p %PORT%" # Windows

Fallback URL

If you're offline or can't configure your browser to use .${tld} domains, you can always access your local servers by going to localhost:2000.

Configurations, logs and self-signed SSL certificate

You can find hotel related files in ~/.hotel :

~/.hotel/conf.json
~/.hotel/daemon.log
~/.hotel/daemon.pid
~/.hotel/key.pem
~/.hotel/cert.pem
~/.hotel/servers/<app-name>.json

By default, hotel uses the following configuration values:

{
  "port": 2000,
  "host": '127.0.0.1',
  
  // Timeout when proxying requests to local domains
  "timeout": 5000,
  
  // Change this if you want to use another tld than .local
  "tld": 'local', 
  
  // If you're behind a corporate proxy, replace this with your network proxy IP (example: "1.2.3.4:5000")
  "proxy": false
}

To override a value, simply add it to ~/.hotel/conf.json and run hotel stop && hotel start

Third-party tools

• Hotelier Hotelier (Mac & Windows Tray App)
• Hotel Clerk OS X menubar
• HotelX Another OS X menubar (only 1.6MB)
• alfred-hotel Alfred 3 workflow
• raycast-hotel-manager Raycast extension
• Hotel Manager Gnome Shell extension

FAQ

Setting a fixed port

hotel add --port 3000 'server-cmd $PORT' 

Adding X-Forwarded-* headers to requests

hotel add --xfwd 'server-cmd'

Setting HTTP_PROXY env

Use --http-proxy-env flag when adding your server or edit your server configuration in ~/.hotel/servers

hotel add --http-proxy-env 'server-cmd'

Proxying requests to a remote https server

hotel add --change-origin 'https://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com'

When proxying to a https server, you may get an error because your .local domain doesn't match the host defined in the server certificate. With this flag, host header is changed to match the target URL.

ENOSPC and EACCES errors

If you're seeing one of these errors in ~/.hotel/daemon.log, this usually means that there's some permissions issues. hotel daemon should be started without sudo and ~/.hotel should belong to $USER.

# to fix permissions
sudo chown -R $USER: $HOME/.hotel

See also, https://docs.npmjs.com/getting-started/fixing-npm-permissions

Configuring a network proxy IP

If you're behind a corporate proxy, replace "proxy" with your network proxy IP in ~/.hotel/conf.json. For example:

{
  "proxy": "1.2.3.4:5000"
}

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md for development instructions, including setup, testing, and CI details.

License

MIT