Wildcards in a Windows hosts file

Acrylic DNS Proxy (free, open source) does the job. It creates a proxy DNS server (on your own computer) with its own hosts file. The hosts file accepts wildcards.

Download from the offical website

http://mayakron.altervista.org/support/browse.php?path=Acrylic&name=Home

Configuring Acrylic DNS Proxy

To configure Acrylic DNS Proxy, install it from the above link then go to:

1. Start
2. Programs
3. Acrylic DNS Proxy
4. Config
5. Edit Custom Hosts File (AcrylicHosts.txt)

Add the folowing lines on the end of the file:

127.0.0.1   *.localhost
127.0.0.1   *.local
127.0.0.1   *.lc

Restart the Acrylic DNS Proxy service:

1. Start
2. Programs
3. Acrilic DNS Proxy
4. Config
5. Restart Acrylic Service

You will also need to adjust your DNS setting in you network interface settings:

1. Start
2. Control Panel
3. Network and Internet
4. Network Connections
5. Local Area Connection Properties
6. TCP/IPv4

Set "Use the following DNS server address":

Preferred DNS Server: 127.0.0.1

If you then combine this answer with jeremyasnyder's answer (using VirtualDocumentRoot) you can then automatically setup domains/virtual hosts by simply creating a directory.

To answer your question, you cannot use wildcards in the hosts file under Windows.

However, if you want to only change the hosts file to make new sites work.... you can configure your Apache like this and you don't have to keep editing it's config:

http://postpostmodern.com/instructional/a-smarter-mamp/

Basically a quick summary based on my setup, add the following to your apache.conf file:

 LoadModule vhost_alias_module modules/mod_vhost_alias.so

 NameVirtualHost *:80

  <Directory "/xampp/sites">
      Options Indexes FollowSymLinks Includes ExecCGI
      AllowOverride All
      Order allow,deny
      Allow from all 
  </Directory>

  <VirtualHost *:80>
      VirtualDocumentRoot c:/xampp/sites/%-1/%-2+/
  </VirtualHost>

This allows me to add an entry like:

127.0.0.1       test.dev

and then make the directory, c:\xampp\sites\dev\test and place the necessary files in there and it just works.

The other option is to use <Directory> tags in apache.conf and reference the pages from http://localhost/project/.

I don't think that it is possible.

You anyway have to modify the apache virtualroot entries every time you add a new site and location, so it's not a big work to syncronise the new name to the Windows vhost file.

Update: please check the next answer and the comments on this answer. This answer is 6 years old and not correct anymore.

I found a posting about Using the Windows Hosts File that also says "No wildcards are allowed."

In the past, I have just added the additional entries to the hosts file, because (as previously said), it's not that much extra work when you already are editing the apache config file.

You could talk your network administrator into setting up a domain for you (say 'evilpuppetmaster.hell') and having the wildcard there so that everything (*.evilpuppetmaster.hell') resolves to your IP

You may try AngryHosts, which provided a way to support wildcard and regular expression. Actually, it's a hosts file enhancement and management software.
More features can be seen @ http://angryhosts.com/features/

I could not find a prohibition in writing, but by convention, the Windows hosts file closely follows the UNIX hosts file, and you cannot put wildcard hostname references into that file.

If you read the man page, it says:

DESCRIPTION
     The hosts file contains information regarding the known hosts on the net-
     work.  For each host a single line should be present with the following
     information:

           Internet address
           Official host name
           Aliases

Although it does say,

     Host names may contain any printable character other than a field delim-
     iter, newline, or comment character.

that is not true from a practical level.

Basically, the code that looks at the /etc/hosts file does not support a wildcard entry.

The workaround is to create all the entries in advance, maybe use a script to put a couple hundred entries at once.

Configuration for nginx config auto subdomain with Acrylic DNS Proxy

auto.conf file for your nginx sites folder

server {
    listen 80;
    server_name ~^(?<branch>.*)\.example\.com;
    root /var/www/html/$branch/public;  

    index index.html index.htm index.php;

    charset utf-8;

    location / {
        try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php$is_args$args;
    }

    location = /favicon.ico { access_log off; log_not_found off; }
    location = /robots.txt  { access_log off; log_not_found off; }

    error_log  /var/log/nginx/$branch.error.log error;

    sendfile off;

    client_max_body_size 100m;

    location ~ \.php$ {
       try_files $uri /index.php =404;
       fastcgi_pass php-fpm:9000;
       fastcgi_index index.php;
       fastcgi_buffers 16 16k;
       fastcgi_buffer_size 32k;
       fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
       include fastcgi_params;
    }

    location ~ /\.ht {
        deny all;
    }
}

Add to Acrylic hosts file 127.0.0.1 example.com *.example.com and restart Acrylic service. $branch - your subdomain name.

Set instead of root /var/www/html/$branch/public; your project path

This can be done using Pi-Hole, just edit the "/etc/hosts" and restart dns service.

nano /etc/hosts
pihole restartdns

Example:

127.0.1.1       raspberrypi
192.168.1.1     w1.dev.net
192.168.1.2     w2.dev.net
192.168.1.3     w3.dev.net

You can use a dynamic DNS client such as http://www.no-ip.com. Then, with an external DNS server CNAME *.mydomain.com to mydomain.no-ip.com.