Does hosts file exist on the iPhone? How to change it?

Question

I am developing an application that query to the server. In my Mac, I use the hosts file to change the dns to point to a local server within my local area network.

Now I need to test it with my iPhone, the problem is that my iPhone does not recognize that server due to the missing configuration for dns.

On my Mac or Windows, I simply add: 192.168.0.20 http://www.google.com to the hosts file.

Now how do I let my iPhone know the URL: http://www.google.com ?

Answer 1

Another option here is to have your iPhone connect via a proxy. Here's an example of how to do it with Fiddler (it's very easy):

http://conceptdev.blogspot.com/2009/01/monitoring-iphone-web-traffic-with.html

In that case any dns lookups your iPhone does will use the hosts file of the machine Fiddler is running on. Note, though, that you must use a name that will be resolved via DNS. example.local, for instance, will not work. example.xyz or example.dev will.