AWS Cloudfront Signed Cookie Local Setup

Question

I've been attempting to get cloudfront signed cookies setup for a site to make getting HLS manifest segment files easier to authenticate. Setting up the cloudfront origin and code in a live environment seems simple enough looking at resources like

• https://mnm.at/markus/2015/04/05/serving-private-content-through-cloudfront-using-signed-cookies/
• http://www.spacevatican.org/2015/5/1/using-cloudfront-signed-cookies/

What I'm trying to figure out is if it's possible to to have this working in a local environment (localhost) prior to deploying the initial solution. Cloudfront itself will forward to the live origin which will set the cookies for cloudfront and continue on as normal, but since the code isn't live this will not work until deployed.

Seems like a chicken and egg problem here where I need it live to use it, but can not test it (with code or manually) without it deployed.

Any thoughts here?

Answer 1

You'd not be able to test/run it properly on your localhost. When you try to set cookies for your CloudFront URL, you'll encounter cross domain issue. I'd recommend you to try generate signed URL first. If signed URL works, that means you're on the right direction. Setting up a cookie cannot go wrong as long as you've properly set CNAME in the CloudFront Web distribution and CloudFront URL records are set within your domain provider.