Developing locally I use self signed certificates. Node will error with the following message unable to verify the first certificate with code UNABLE_TO_VERIFY_LEAF_SIGNATURE the solution is to set:

process.env['NODE_TLS_REJECT_UNAUTHORIZED'] = '0';

However, since its only for local development and its a security risk, I prefer to set the environmental var when launching the node script:

$ NODE_TLS_REJECT_UNAUTHORIZED=0 node ./server.js