How do I perform regression testing on let's encrypt certificate issuance?

Question

I am a web hosting provider who provides free HTTPS certificates to the domain owners on my platform automatically using Let's Encrypt.

I need to be able to test out repeatedly the process of issuance of certificates for a domain. Since I do not have unlimited domains to test with, I need to be able to fully reset all certificates or any process that have occurred on a domain so I can repeat the process in a test suite.

How can I do this ?

I am using Node/Express and greenlock as my server software.

Answer 1

If you also provide DNS

You should be able to easily set up a testing environment that uses DNS instead of http challenges, so you can test all of the domains without affecting production.

If not, use staging and curl

I think it may be easiest to write you test with bash and curl at first. You can use curl's --with-ca-path= option to allow the staging environment's root authority to pass the checks.

You could also do this more programmatically in node.js, which also has the option to add custom certificate authorities on a per-request basis.