Localhost Explained for Beginners
What is a localhost? Why is it called home? In this blog post, I will explain localhost for programming beginners so that you will understand it in no time.
Localhost Makes Life Easier for Beginners
Let’s start with an example: when you write a server application, and you don’t have a remote server running yet, you might ask yourself: “ How can I test my server app? “. That is the moment when localhost comes to the rescue, because — surprise — you don’t need a remote server yet, to test your application.
Oversimplified, a server is a computer, just like the one you own. There are differences (specialized CPUs, probably Linux running instead of Windows, optimized programs, etc.), but overall it is just a computer. Thus your computer can also act as a server and establish a connection to itself.
How Does Localhost Work?
When you try to call a website, your computer tries to connect to a remote computer (aka server) somewhere on the internet. It sends a request and, as a result, receives a response with some content.
When you call localhost (or 127.0.0.1), you send a request to your own device. Your computer recognizes the address (localhost or 127.0.0.1), and instead of sending it out over the internet, it returns the request back through a loopback mechanism. Keeping the server app example in mind, now your server (on the same machine) can receive the request and send a response with some content.
The requests/responses will never leave your computer. In other words: By calling localhost, your computer always talks with itself.
By that, you can test your application that is not ready for production use. Isn’t that great?
Now you should have a good understanding of using localhost and be even able to explain it to other programming beginners.
Difference Between Localhost and 127.0.0.1
There is (almost) none — it is just more comfortable to type localhost instead of 127.0.0.1, but technically it is (almost) the same.
Why almost? Because 127.0.0.1 is the way to write an IP address with IPv4 (Internet Protocol version 4). With IPv6 (Internet Protocol version 6), you can also write ::1 instead of localhost. So technically, it would be more correct to say that localhost, 127.0.0.1 and ::1 refer to the same concept.
Now you hopefully understand the saying that nothing feels like 127.0.0.1.
Hint: Home
Thanks for reading!
Originally published at https://codingflashlight.com on May 22, 2021.
