Using Custom Domains With IIS Express

iisiis-7iis-express

Traditionally I use custom domains with my localhost development server. Something along the lines of:

dev.example.com
dev.api.example.com

This has provided me a ton of flexibility when working with external API's such as Facebook. This has worked great in the past with the built in Visual Studio Development Server, because all I needed to do was add a CNAME to those DNS records pointing to 127.0.0.1.

However I have not been able to get this to work with IIS Express. Everything I have tried seems to have failed. I have even added the correct XML config to the applicationHost.config file for IIS Express, but it doesn't seem to recognize the entries as valid as a true install of IIS would.

<binding protocol="http" bindingInformation="*:1288:dev.example.com" />

Whenever I enter this line and try to request http://dev.example.com:1288 I get the following message:

Bad Request – Invalid Hostname

Does anybody know if I am missing something obvious? Or did the IIS Express team really lack the foresight to see this type of use?

Best Answer

This is what worked for me (Updated for VS 2013, see revision history for 2010, for VS 2015 see this: https://stackoverflow.com/a/32744234/218971):

  1. Right-click your Web Application Project ▶ Properties ▶ Web, then configure the Servers section as follows:

    • Select IIS Express ▼ from the drop down
    • Project Url: http://localhost
    • Override application root URL: http://dev.example.com
    • Click Create Virtual Directory (if you get an error here you may need to disable IIS 5/6/7/8, change IIS's Default Site to anything but port :80, make sure Skype isn't using port 80, etc.)

  2. Optionally: Set the Start URL to http://dev.example.com

  3. Open %USERPROFILE%\My Documents\IISExpress\config\applicationhost.config (Windows XP, Vista, and 7) and edit the site definition in the <sites> config block to be along the lines of the following:

    <site name="DevExample" id="997005936">
    <application path="/" applicationPool="Clr2IntegratedAppPool">
        <virtualDirectory
            path="/"
            physicalPath="C:\path\to\application\root" />
    </application>
    <bindings>
        <binding
            protocol="http"
            bindingInformation=":80:dev.example.com" />
    </bindings>
    <applicationDefaults applicationPool="Clr2IntegratedAppPool" />
</site>

  4. If running MVC: make sure the applicationPool is set to one of the "Integrated" options (like "Clr2IntegratedAppPool").

  5. Open your hosts file and add the line 127.0.0.1 dev.example.com.

  6. ► Start your application!

Some great advice from the comments:

  • You may need to run Visual Studio as Administrator.
  • If you want to make other devs see your IIS run netsh http add urlacl url=http://dev.example.com:80/ user=everyone
  • If you want the site to resolve for all hosts set bindingInformation="*:80:". Use any port you want, 80 is just convenient. To resolve all hosts you'll need to run Visual Studio as an administrator
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