Summary

The article provides a guide on configuring HTTPs on a server without a custom domain using Caddy and nip.io.

Abstract

The author discusses a challenge encountered while setting up a backend API for a small project without purchasing a domain name or SSL certificate. The solution involved using Caddy, an open-source web server with automatic HTTPs, and nip.io, a service that maps IP addresses to hostnames. The article outlines the steps to install Caddy on a Linux server, such as an AWS EC2 instance, and configure it with a Caddyfile for reverse proxying to a docker container. It also explains how to use nip.io to create a free hostname for the server's IP address, allowing for HTTPs configuration without the need for a custom domain. The author concludes by noting the simplicity of the setup and the effectiveness of the tools used.

Opinions

The author finds Caddy to be a powerful and enterprise-ready web server, particularly highlighting its automatic HTTPs feature.
The use of nip.io is presented as a convenient solution for mapping an IP address to a hostname without the cost of a custom domain.
The author expresses satisfaction with the ease of installation and configuration of Caddy, as well as the ability to use it with a docker image and docker-compose.
The article suggests that the combination of Caddy and nip.io is not only useful for small projects but also a viable option for those looking to avoid the expenses associated with custom domains and SSL certificates.

Configure HTTPs on server without custom domain

I was working on a quick project recently and I ran into an issue — I wanted to configure HTTPs for my backend API. It was a small project and as such I had no need to purchase a domain name. I just needed a way to configure HTTPs on that server without buying a SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) certificate and without a domain name.

After searching the internet for a bit, I came across Caddy — an open source web server with automatic HTTPs. In this article, I will walk you through how to use Caddy and nip.io to configure HTTPs on your server without getting a custom domain name.

When I ran into this problem and for this article, I will be using AWS EC2 instance, however you can do the same on any Linux server.

Caddy 2 is a powerful, enterprise-ready, open source web server with automatic HTTPS written in Go

— Caddy

Installation

Caddy provides various installation options for various Linux distros. You can check if Caddy is available for your operating system and how to install for your operating system here. As at the time of writing this article, I am using a Linux Server on AWS. Installation is as simple as these commands:

sudo apt install -y debian-keyring debian-archive-keyring apt-transport-https

curl -1sLf 'https://dl.cloudsmith.io/public/caddy/stable/gpg.key' | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /usr/share/keyrings/caddy-stable-archive-keyring.gpg

curl -1sLf 'https://dl.cloudsmith.io/public/caddy/stable/debian.deb.txt' | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/caddy-stable.list

sudo apt update

sudo apt install caddy

Setup

Once installation is done, the caddy server should be running already. You can check by simply running:

sudo systemctl status caddy

You should see something similar to this when you run this command

If you caddy server is not running, you can start it by simply running:

sudo systemctl start caddy

From the output of the status command, we can see our Caddyfile configuration can be found under the etc folder just like Nginx. Configuring your Caddyfile is simple, here is a sample from the caddy documentation. For this particular project, I have used a docker image and docker-compose. My caddyfile is as simple as this:

<IP_ADDRESS OR HOST_NAME GOES_HERE>

reverse_proxy localhost:5050

On the first line, I have my IP address (the current public IP of my EC2 instance) and on the second line, I am using reverse proxy to forward requests to the address of my docker container. Thats all! I can restart my server now and test.

Note: You can find more ways to customise your caddy server here.

The next step is to map your IP address to a hostname. However, we do not want to buy a custom domain — Thats where nip.io comes in!

nip.io allows you to do that by mapping any IP Address to a hostname.

— nip.io website

nip.io ensures we do not have to edit much. We just need to update our caddyfile to something like this:

<IP_ADDRESS>.nip.io

reverse_proxy localhost:5050

You can restart your Caddy server by running this command:

sudo systemctl restart caddy

And we are all set ! You should be able to see ur web server when you visit https://.nip.io.

I hope you found this helpful!