Share you dev site in your lan without any dns hassle using xip.io

Almost any web developer team has had this problem:

dev1: hey "dev2" can you check this site i'm doing in your machine.
dev2: ok, how do i get in?.
dev1: add to your host file "client.local" ponting to "192.168.1.101"
dev2: ok give me a second.
... some time passes ... (admin / root rights, some file changes, etc...)
dev2: wow.. that's slick!.
... roll back changes to host file ...

I found today this cool service xip.io from 37signals. From their site

What is xip.io?
xip.io is a magic domain name that provides wildcard DNS for any IP address.

In my case i use a virtual box for my web developing (lamp stack) and i use this name schema for our projects:  project.vbox or client.vbox .

	<VirtualHost *:80>
	DocumentRoot /client/path
	Servername client.vbox
	...
	</VirtualHost>

view raw virutal_host hosted with ❤ by GitHub

To setup your virtual host to accepts domains from xip.io just update your virtual host definition to:

	<VirtualHost *:80>
	DocumentRoot /client/path
	Servername client.vbox
	ServerAlias client.*.xip.io
	...
	</VirtualHost>

view raw gistfile1.sh hosted with ❤ by GitHub

This will accept urls like http://client.192.168.1.101.xip.io, so next time your chat will be:

dev1: hey "dev2" can you check this site i'm doing in your machine, open this in your browser http://coolwebapp.192.168.1.101.xip.io
dev2: wow.. that's slick!.