Serving sites

Sites are served at http://<name>.test. To use a different domain, run valet domain <domain>, for example valet domain wip. Avoid local, which belongs to mDNS: Valet won’t delegate local or localhost and falls back to /etc/hosts entries for them.

Parking a directory

valet park registers a directory. Every folder inside it becomes a site named after the folder:

cd ~/sites
valet park

Now ~/sites/blog is served at http://blog.test, ~/sites/shop at http://shop.test, and so on. Pass a path to park another directory without changing into it: valet park ~/work.

On systems where Valet uses /etc/hosts for name resolution, run valet restart hosts after creating a new project folder, so its name resolves. See DNS.

Command	Effect
valet paths	List the parked directories.
valet forget [path]	Stop serving a parked directory.

Linking a single project

To serve one project without parking its parent directory, link it:

cd ~/projects/api
valet link              # http://api.test
valet link backend      # http://backend.test

Command	Effect
valet links	List all links.
valet unlink [name]	Remove a link.

Securing sites with HTTPS

Valet creates its own certificate authority and adds it to your system’s trust store and to the NSS databases browsers use. To serve a site over HTTPS with HTTP/2:

valet secure blog       # https://blog.test
valet unsecure blog     # back to plain HTTP
valet secured           # list secured sites

Proxying a local port

To give a Node app, a Docker container or anything else listening on a local port a Valet domain:

valet proxy app http://localhost:3000 --secure    # https://app.test
valet proxies                                     # list proxies
valet unproxy app

Opening and sharing

Command	Effect
valet open [domain]	Open the current (or given) site in your browser.
valet which	Show which driver serves the current directory.
valet share	Share the current site on a public URL through ngrok.
valet fetch-share-url	Print the URL of the running ngrok tunnel.
valet ngrok-auth <token>	Store your ngrok auth token. Sharing needs an ngrok account.

Sharing on your local network

Valet’s Nginx listens on all network interfaces, so other devices on your network can reach your sites through nip.io, a public DNS service that resolves a name containing an IP address to that address. Find your machine’s LAN address with ip -4 addr, then open the site at http://<site>.<address>.nip.io from another device:

http://blog.192.168.1.20.nip.io

Valet recognises the .nip.io suffix and serves the blog site. This needs:

• the other device to reach nip.io’s DNS (or your router to pass such lookups on),
• your firewall to allow incoming connections on port 80.

This serves sites over plain HTTP, secured ones included, because Valet’s certificates are only for .test names and only your machine trusts them. For an HTTPS link, use valet share.

Ports

Valet listens on ports 80 and 443. To change them:

valet port 8080          # HTTP
valet port 8443 --https  # HTTPS

Wildcard subdomains

Where Valet can delegate its domain through systemd-resolved, any subdomain of a site works too: api.blog.test reaches blog.test. Otherwise only the exact site names resolve. See DNS for when each applies.