Redirect from localhost to external url

Question

I want to redirect a local port door to a website. So that when I access https://localhost:8080 it actually loads (or redirects) https://www.facebook.com , or something like that.

I'm on a windows machine. I already tried changing the file C:\\Windows\\System32\\drivers\\etc\\hosts but it did not work.

I only found solutions of the other way around. Does anyone know how to do this?

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

You can use a reverse proxy to implement this feature. The data flow would look like:

Browser -> localhost:8080 -> proxy server that listen port 8080 on localhost -> proxy server sends request to example.com -> proxy server receives response from example.com and return to browser -> Browser

This reverse proxy can be programmed manually, or by using HTTP proxy software, such as Charles :