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# redirect-https.js
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Secure-by-default redirects from HTTP to HTTPS.
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* Browsers get a 301 + Location redirect
* Only developers, bots, and APIs see security warning (advising to use HTTPS)
* Always uses meta redirect as a fallback, for everyone
* '/' always gets a 301 (for `curl | bash` installers)
* minimally configurable, don't get fancy
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See < https: / / coolaj86 . com / articles / secure-your-redirects / >
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## Installation and Usage
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```bash
npm install --save redirect-https
```
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```js
'use strict';
var express = require('express');
var app = express();
app.use('/', require('redirect-https')({
body: '<!-- Hello Mr Developer! Please use HTTPS instead --> '
}));
module.exports = app;
```
## Options
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```js
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{ port: 443 // defaults to 443
, body: '' // defaults to an html comment to use https
, trustProxy: true // useful if you haven't set this option in express
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, browsers: 301 // issue 301 redirect if the user-agent contains "Mozilla/"
, apis: 'meta' // issue meta redirects to non-browsers
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}
```
* This module will call `next()` if the connection is already tls / https.
* If `trustProxy` is true, and `X-Forward-Proto` is https, `next()` will be called.
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* If you use `{{URL}}` in the body text it will be replaced with a URI encoded and HTML escaped url (it'll look just like it is)
* If you use `{{HTML_URL}}` in the body text it will be replaced with a URI decoded and HTML escaped url (it'll look just like it would in Chrome's URL bar)
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## Advanced Options
For the sake of `curl | bash` installers and the like there is also the option to cause bots and apis (i.e. curl)
to get a certain redirect for an exact path match:
```js
{ paths: [
{ match: '/'
, redirect: 301
}
, { match: /^\/$/
, redirect: 301
}
]
}
```
If you're using this, you're probably getting too fancy (but hey, I get too fancy sometimes too).
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## Demo
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```javascript
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'use strict';
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var http = require('http');
var server = http.createServer();
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var securePort = process.argv[2] || 8443;
var insecurePort = process.argv[3] || 8080;
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server.on('request', require('redirect-https')({
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port: securePort
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, body: '<!-- Hello! Please use HTTPS instead --> '
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, trustProxy: true // default is false
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}));
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server.listen(insecurePort, function () {
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console.log('Listening on http://localhost.pplwink.com:' + server.address().port);
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});
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```
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# Meta redirect by default, but why?
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When something is broken (i.e. insecure), you don't want it to kinda work, you want developers to notice.
Using a meta redirect will break requests from `curl` and api calls from a programming language, but still have all the SEO and speed benefits of a normal `301` .
```html
< html > < head >
< meta http-equiv = "refresh" content = "0;URL='https://example.com/foo'" / >
< / head > < body >
<!-- Hello Mr. Developer! Please use https instead. Thank you! -->
< / html >
```
# Other strategies
If your application is properly separated between static assets and api, then it would probably be more beneficial to return a 200 OK with an error message inside
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# Security
The incoming URL is already URI encoded by the browser but, just in case, I run an html escape on it
so that no malicious links of this sort will yield unexpected behavior:
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* `http://localhost.pplwink.com:8080/"><script>alert('hi')</script>`
* `http://localhost.pplwink.com:8080/';URL=http://example.com`
* `http://localhost.pplwink.com:8080/;URL=http://example.com`
