AWS HTTPS Redirects
and why understanding the Stack Overflow answers are just as important as knowing they are there
I love Azure. Like a lot. As primarily a .NET guy, Azure makes everything pretty much easy. I think AWS wants to be .NET friendly, but they just don't seem to be there yet.
Recently, I was tasked with forcing HTTPS on a .NET Framework site that lives on AWS in Elastic Beanstalk. After some digging and some false starts, I found this answer on Stack Overflow which essentially boils down to this:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<configuration>
<system.webServer>
<rewrite>
<rules>
<clear />
<rule name="Redirect to https" stopProcessing="true">
<match url=".*" />
<conditions>
<add input="{HTTPS}" pattern="off" ignoreCase="true" />
</conditions>
<action type="Redirect" url="https://{HTTP_HOST}{REQUEST_URI}" redirectType="Permanent" appendQueryString="false" />
</rule>
</rules>
</rewrite>
</system.webServer>
</configuration>
Great, problem solved!
Not so much. Now the server gives a 302: too many redirects error "What?"
I took a minute to think about the error "too many redirects" and revisited the rewrite rule. Sure enough I noticed that all traffic was being forwarded. Including the HTTPS traffic. One minor modification for the url definition: ` and I was off and running. The final solution being:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<configuration>
<system.webServer>
<rewrite>
<rules>
<clear />
<rule name="Redirect to https" stopProcessing="true">
<!--This is the updated line-->
<match url="http://.*" />
<!----------------------------------->
<conditions>
<add input="{HTTPS}" pattern="off" ignoreCase="true" />
</conditions>
<action type="Redirect" url="https://{HTTP_HOST}{REQUEST_URI}" redirectType="Permanent" appendQueryString="false" />
</rule>
</rules>
</rewrite>
</system.webServer>
</configuration>
This ensures only HTTP requests are forwarded and HTTPS requests are left unmolested.
Software Development Nerd
You can also find Kevin Rich on GitHub, LinkedIn and Stackoverflow. Get in touch by Email.
