Localhost Development URLs

[SpicyDuck]

Is there any way I can develop a site localy, without worrying about changing the URLs when it comes to uploading to a web server?

Sometimes I run into problems where some scripts require absolute paths to other scripts, and then I have to go through and change them all once I'm ready to upload. It's slow and tedious.

Surely there must be some kind of htaccess-like control for telling the browser that

http://localhost/www.domain.com/

should be shown as

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www.domain.com

, ignoring 'localhost'.

Or some kind of a switch to change the name of 'localhost' to the actual project domain I wish to work on, at any one time.

I'm using XAMPP and I've tried searching their Apache Friends forum for some answers, but I've had no luck.

 

[Sic]

add NameVirtualHost and VirtualHost directives in your httpd.conf, then edit your hosts file and add the name of your virtual host to point to 127.0.0.1, then restart apache.

here's a copy of my virtual hosts definition:

NameVirtualHost 127.0.0.1
<VirtualHost *:80>
    DocumentRoot "/Users/Jasper/Sites"
		ServerName localhost
		ServerAlias localhost
</VirtualHost>
<VirtualHost django>
    DocumentRoot "/Users/Jasper/Sites/django/first"
		ServerName django
		ServerAlias django
		<Location />
		    SetHandler python-program
		    PythonHandler django.core.handlers.modpython
		    SetEnv DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE first.settings
				PythonPath "['/Users/Jasper/Sites/django'] + sys.path"
		    PythonDebug On
		</Location>
		<Location "/media">
		    SetHandler None
		</Location>
		<LocationMatch "\.(jpg|gif|png)$">
		    SetHandler None
		</LocationMatch>
</VirtualHost>
<VirtualHost fw>
    DocumentRoot "/Users/Jasper/Sites/fw"
    ServerName fw
    ServerAlias fw
</VirtualHost>
<VirtualHost akof>
    DocumentRoot "/Users/Jasper/Sites/akof"
    ServerName akof
    ServerAlias akof
</VirtualHost>
<VirtualHost blog>
    DocumentRoot "/Users/Jasper/Sites/blog"
    ServerName blog
    ServerAlias blog
</VirtualHost>

 

[Swanster]

You could also edit the windows 'hosts' file (I think it's in c:\windows). Add something like:
domain.com 127.0.0.1
Then set the the apache server name to domain.com; probably best using VirtualHosts here (as above) so you don't have to keep editing the apache config each time you work on a different site.

This way, whenever you enter domain.com into the browser, you'll be connecting to the localhost webserver (and obviously, if/when you want to connect to the *real* domain.com, you'll have to delete the line in hosts).

edit: Should have really read the above post properly, I missed the first line