# redirect-https.js
Redirect from HTTP to HTTPS.
Makes for a seemless experience to end users in browsers (defaults to `301 Permanent + Location` redirect)
and tightens security for apis and bots, without adversely affecting strange browsers (fallback to `meta` redirect).
See
## Installation and Usage
```bash
npm install --save redirect-https
```
```js
'use strict';
var express = require('express');
var app = express();
app.use('/', require('redirect-https')({
body: ''
}));
module.exports = app;
```
## Options
```
{ 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
, browsers: 301 // issue 301 redirect if the user-agent contains "Mozilla/"
, apis: 'meta' // issue meta redirects to non-browsers
}
```
* 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.
* 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)
## Demo
```javascript
'use strict';
var http = require('http');
var server = http.createServer();
var securePort = process.argv[2] || 8443;
var insecurePort = process.argv[3] || 8080;
server.on('request', require('redirect-https')({
port: securePort
, body: ''
, trustProxy: true // default is false
}));
server.listen(insecurePort, function () {
console.log('Listening on http://localhost.pplwink.com:' + server.address().port);
});
```
# Meta redirect by default, but why?
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
```
# 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
# 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:
* `http://localhost.pplwink.com:8080/">`
* `http://localhost.pplwink.com:8080/';URL=http://example.com`
* `http://localhost.pplwink.com:8080/;URL=http://example.com`