Wildcard Hostnames

Wildcard hostnames let one vhost handle all subdomains of a domain.

Basic Usage

[[vhost]]
hostnames = ["*.example.com"]
root = "/static"

This matches:

• blog.example.com
• app.example.com
• staging.app.example.com

What Wildcards Do NOT Match

Wildcards only match subdomains. The apex domain itself is not matched:

[[vhost]]
hostnames = ["*.example.com"]
root = "/static/wildcard"

[[vhost]]
hostnames = ["example.com"]
root = "/static/apex"

• sub.example.com → served from /static/wildcard
• example.com → served from /static/apex

Matching Priority

When a request arrives, Rustinx checks vhosts in this order:

1. Exact match: blog.example.com defined as an exact hostname
2. Wildcard match: *.example.com pattern
3. Catch-all: _ hostname

This means you can override specific subdomains:

# Specific subdomain with SPA
[[vhost]]
hostnames = ["app.example.com"]
root = "/static/app"
spa = true

# Everything else
[[vhost]]
hostnames = ["*.example.com"]
root = "/static/default"

Wildcard Rules

• The wildcard must be *. followed by at least two DNS labels
• *.example.com is valid
• *.com is rejected (too broad)
• *.co.uk is valid
• Only one wildcard per hostname entry

Trailing Dot Normalization

DNS fully-qualified domain names end with a dot (example.com.). Rustinx normalizes these automatically. A request with Host: example.com. matches the vhost for example.com.