CODEWITHSUNDEEP
ruby-on-railsangularjsapachelocalhost
Shuvam Shah
Shuvam Shah

Reputation: 367

What is localhost:8000 as used in Codecademy (for AngularJS and Ruby on Rails tutorials)?

I want to know what is this: localhost:8000, found in Codecademy tutorials for AngularJS and Ruby on Rails. I even installed Apache 2, but to work with it I need to dial: http://localhost/. While working on some html files, I often come across Firefox's Inspect Element where a section is to mention localhost and its number like this: localhost:8000. I want to know what's this and can I use it to access my host from my android device or some other PC as we do access Codecademy's localhost to learn AngularJS and Ruby on Rails. Pls help. Thanks in advance. :-)

Upvotes: 4

Views: 18754

Answers (1)

Programmer1994
Programmer1994

Reputation: 975

Localhost is the loopback-address of your pc. The IP-address behind it is 127.0.0.1. With localhost, it is possible to simulate a web-server environment and it is mostly used to simulate running web-applications as if they are running on a webserver. :8000 stands for the port-number on which the browser connects to the server. This is because the application runs (in this case) on port 8000 of the server. So it is not enough to just install Apache 2 and surf to http://localhost/ you have to configure Apache so that it runs your web-application on the desired port. The port-number itself has no special meaning. The different ports are just a part of the url so the browser knows on which port it has to connect. Some protocols use default ports. (e.g. HTTP will always connect to port 80, unless your specify another port in your webbrowser)

I'm sure a lot of people can explain it much better, but here is a begin.

More info about running ruby on rails on an Apache webserver:

How can i run a ruby on rails project on apache server?

How to setup Ruby on Rails Hosting using Apache, from Development to Production

EDIT: Technically, the whole 127.0.0.0/8 address block is reserved for loopback purposes. The default one, configurged in hosts.txt is 127.0.0.1 and the most famous.

Upvotes: 4

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