Development Licenses and Development Mode

You don’t need a paid license to build and test a site with the licensed features.

Development mode

On your own machine, licensed features work without a license key. The license status reads Development.

Development mode is on when all of these are true:

• the site’s address is local: localhost, a *.localhost or *.local name, or a loopback address. The address is taken from UmbracoApplicationUrl, or, if that isn’t set, from the first request. A public UmbracoApplicationUrl rules development mode out;
• the site is a Debug build and runs in the Development environment (ASPNETCORE_ENVIRONMENT=Development);
• no live Stripe key (sk_live_… or rk_live_…) is anywhere in the site’s configuration; a live-mode object read from Stripe by the add-on also ends it, so a key held outside the configuration is caught. Development mode needs the Stripe add-on installed: it registers the live-key check, and without it the key is treated as live.
• no live Stripe checkout session has been created;
• every request so far has been local: a local host name, from a loopback address (127.0.0.0/8 or ::1). An address on your network (for example 192.168.x.x) is not local. A request that carries a client address that is not loopback in X-Forwarded-For, Forwarded, X-Real-IP, CF-Connecting-IP or True-Client-IP is not local either.

One request from outside, or a live Stripe checkout, turns development mode off until the site restarts. If development mode isn’t available, the log says why, once.

The licence checks detect interference and turn licensed features off; they cannot be made to see a different licence. They rely on ASP.NET Core’s own hosting events (not on anything a site registers), and code that handles a request cross-checks that the request was seen. If a site interferes with that (for example by replacing the hosting diagnostics in DI), licensed features turn off for every request and background job until the interference is removed and the site restarts, the License Status reads “Licence checks were interfered with”, and the log says why, once. Code that builds its own HttpContext (prerendering, a static export, a warm-up) is not interference. A request is read for its host when a licence decision is made, so after your own UseForwardedHeaders(). Work that runs outside a request, such as your own scheduled jobs calling UmbCheckout services, is licensed whenever the site’s license is.

Note

The Addon database tables (for Baskets and tax rates) are created when the site starts if it is licensed at that moment. Development mode starts with the first local request, after the site has started, so the tables are created on the first licensed request instead. A site that is never licensed never gets them.

Note

While a debugger is attached, a production license is off. Development licenses, and local hosts in a Debug build, are exempt.

Development licenses

For a staging site, or any site that isn’t on your own machine, ask for the development license included with each paid license. It works like a normal license (in Release and Debug builds, for the domains and folder it lists) and is shown as Development License: Yes on the configuration screen. It mustn’t be used to run a live shop.

To request a development license please create an account and open a support ticket in UmbPanel.

Please include the domains to be added to the license in the request.