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letsencrypt-express

Free SSL and managed or automatic HTTPS for node.js with Express, Koa, Connect, Hapi, and all other middleware systems.

Automatic Registration via SNI (httpsOptions.SNICallback)
- registrations require an approval callback in production
Automatic Renewal (around 80 days)
- renewals are fully automatic and happen in the background, with no downtime
Automatic vhost / virtual hosting

All you have to do is start the webserver and then visit it at its domain name.

Install

npm install --save letsencrypt-express@2.x

Important: Use node v4.5+ or v6.x, node <= v4.4 has a known bug in the Buffer implementation.

QuickStart

Here's a completely working example that will get you started:

app.js:

'use strict';

require('letsencrypt-express').create({

  server: 'staging'

, email: 'john.doe@example.com'

, agreeTos: true

, approveDomains: [ 'example.com' ]

, app: require('express')().use('/', function (req, res) {
    res.end('Hello, World!');
  })

}).listen(80, 443);

Certificates will be stored in ~/letsencrypt.

Important:

You must set server to https://acme-v01.api.letsencrypt.org/directory after you have tested that your setup works.

Why You Must Use 'staging' First

There are a number of common problems related to system configuration - firewalls, ports, permissions, etc - that you are likely to run up against when using letsencrypt for your first time.

In order to avoid being blocked by hitting rate limits with bad requests, you should always test against the 'staging' server (https://acme-staging.api.letsencrypt.org/directory) first.

Migrating from v1.x

Whereas v1.x had a few hundred lines of code, v2.x is a single small file of about 50 lines.

A few important things to note:

Delete your v1.x ~/letsencrypt directory, otherwise you get this:
- { type: 'urn:acme:error:malformed', detail: 'Parse error reading JWS', status: 400 }
approveRegistration has been replaced by approveDomains
All of the behavior has moved to the various plugins, which each have their own options
Use https and http directly, don't rely on the silly .listen() helper. It's just there for looks.
lex.createAcmeResponder() is now lex.middleware(require('redirect-https')()) or lex.middleware(app)

Usage

The oversimplified example was the bait (because everyone seems to want an example that fits in 3 lines, even if it's terribly bad practices), now here's the switch:

serve.js:

'use strict';

// returns an instance of node-letsencrypt with additional helper methods
var lex = require('letsencrypt-express').create({
  // set to https://acme-v01.api.letsencrypt.org/directory in production
  server: 'staging'

// If you wish to replace the default plugins, you may do so here
//
, challenges: { 'http-01': require('le-challenge-fs').create({ webrootPath: '/tmp/acme-challenges' }) }
, store: require('le-store-certbot').create({ webrootPath: '/tmp/acme-challenges' })

// You probably wouldn't need to replace the default sni handler
// See https://github.com/Daplie/le-sni-auto if you think you do
//, sni: require('le-sni-auto').create({})

, approveDomains: approveDomains
});

function approveDomains(opts, certs, cb) {
  // This is where you check your database and associated
  // email addresses with domains and agreements and such


  // The domains being approved for the first time are listed in opts.domains
  // Certs being renewed are listed in certs.altnames
  if (certs) {
    opts.domains = certs.altnames;
  }
  else {
    opts.email = 'john.doe@example.com';
    opts.agreeTos = true;
  }

  // NOTE: you can also change other options such as `challengeType` and `challenge`
  // opts.challengeType = 'http-01';
  // opts.challenge = require('le-challenge-fs').create({});

  cb(null, { options: opts, certs: certs });
}

// handles acme-challenge and redirects to https
require('http').createServer(lex.middleware(require('redirect-https')())).listen(80, function () {
  console.log("Listening for ACME http-01 challenges on", this.address());
});



var app = require('express')();
app.use('/', function (req, res) {
  res.end('Hello, World!');
});

// handles your app
require('https').createServer(lex.httpsOptions, lex.middleware(app)).listen(443, function () {
  console.log("Listening for ACME tls-sni-01 challenges and serve app on", this.address());
});

Security Warning:

If you don't do proper checks in approveDomains(opts, certs, cb) an attacker will spoof SNI packets with bad hostnames and that will cause you to be rate-limited and or blocked from the ACME server.

API

This module is an elaborate ruse (to provide an oversimplified example and to nab some SEO).

The API is actually located at node-letsencrypt options (because all options are simply passed through to node-letsencrypt proper without modification).

The only "API" consists of two options, the rest is just a wrapper around node-letsencrypt to take LOC from 15 to 5:

opts.app An express app in the format function (req, res) { ... } (no next).
lex.listen(plainPort, tlsPort) Accepts port numbers (or arrays of port numbers) to listen on.

Brief overview of some simple options for node-letsencrypt:

opts.server set to https://acme-v01.api.letsencrypt.org/directory in production
opts.email The default email to use to accept agreements.
opts.agreeTos When set to true, this always accepts the LetsEncrypt TOS. When a string it checks the agreement url first.
opts.approveDomains can be either of:
- An explicit array of allowed domains such as [ 'example.com', 'www.example.com' ]
- A callback function (opts, certs, cb) { cb(null, { options: opts, certs: certs }); } for setting email, agreeTos, domains, etc (as shown in usage example above)
opts.renewWithin is the maximum number of days (in ms) before expiration to renew a certificate.
opts.renewBy is the minimum number of days (in ms) before expiration to renew a certificate.

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