Rails - Ensuring www is in the URL

Question

I have my app hosted on Heroku, and have a cert for www.mysite.com

I'm trying to solve for

• Ensuring www is in the URL, and that the URL is HTTPS

Here's what I have so far:

class ApplicationController < ActionController::Base
before_filter :check_uri

  def check_uri
    redirect_to request.protocol + "www." + request.host_with_port + request.request_uri if !/^www/.match(request.host) if Rails.env == 'production'
  end

But this doesn't seem to being working. Any suggestions or maybe different approaches to solve for ensuring HTTPs and www. is in the URL?

Thanks

Answer 1

For the SSL, use rack-ssl.

# config/environments/production.rb
MyApp::Application.configure do
  require 'rack/ssl'
  config.middleware.use Rack::SSL
  # the rest of the production config....
end

For the WWW, create a Rack middleware of your own.

# lib/rack/www.rb
class Rack::Www
  def initialize(app)
    @app = app
  end
  def call(env)
    if env['SERVER_NAME'] =~ /^www\./
      @app.call(env)
    else
      [ 307, { 'Location' => 'https://www.my-domain-name.com/' }, '' ]
    end
  end
end

# config/environments/production.rb
MyApp::Application.configure do
  config.middleware.use Rack::Www
  # the rest of the production config....
end

To test this in the browser, you can edit your /etc/hosts file on your local development computer

# /etc/hosts
# ...
127.0.0.1 my-domain-name.com
127.0.0.1 www.my-domain-name.com

run the application in production mode on your local development computer

$ RAILS_ENV=production rails s -p 80

and browse to http://my-domain-name.com/ and see what happens.

For the duration of the test, you may want to comment out the line redirecting you to the HTTPS site.

There may also be ways to test this with the standard unit-testing and integration-testing tools that many Rails projects use, such as Test::Unit and RSpec.

Answer 2

Pivotal Labs has some middleware called Refraction that is a mod_rewrite replacement, except it lives in your source code instead of your Apache config.

It may be a little overkill for what you need, but it handles this stuff pretty easily.

Answer 3

In Rails 3

#config/routes.rb
Example::Application.routes.draw do
  redirect_proc = Proc.new { redirect { |params, request|
    URI.parse(request.url).tap { |x| x.host = "www.example.net"; x.scheme = "https" }.to_s
  } }
  constraints(:host => "example.net") do
    match "(*x)" => redirect_proc.call
  end
  constraints(:scheme => "http") do
    match "(*x)" => redirect_proc.call
  end
  # .... 
  # .. more routes ..
  # ....
end

Answer 4

Your best bet would be to set up redirect with your DNS provider, so it happens long before any request reaches your server. From the Heroku Dev Center:

Subdomain redirection results in a 301 permanent redirect to the specified subdomain for all requests to the naked domain so all current and future requests are properly routed and the full www hostname is displayed in the user’s location field.

DNSimple provides a convenient URL redirect seen here redirecting from the heroku-sslendpoint.com naked domain to the www.heroku-sslendpoint.com subdomain.

For proper configuration on Heroku the www subdomain should then be a CNAME record reference to yourappname.herokuapp.com.

It's not just DNSimple that does this. My DNS provider is 123 Reg and they support it but call it web forwarding.

Answer 5

I think the issue is you are running on Heroku. Check the Heroku documentation regarding Wildcard domains:

"If you'd like your app to respond to any subdomain under your custom domain name (as in *.yourdomain.com), you’ll need to use the wildcard domains add-on. ..."

$ heroku addons:add wildcard_domains

Also look at Redirecting Traffic to Specific Domain:

"If you have multiple domains, or your app has users that access it via its Heroku subdomain but you later switched to your own custom domain, you will probably want to get all users onto the same domain with a redirect in a before filter. Something like this will do the job:"

class ApplicationController
  before_filter :ensure_domain

  TheDomain = 'myapp.mydomain.com'

  def ensure_domain
    if request.env['HTTP_HOST'] != TheDomain
      redirect_to TheDomain
    end
  end
end

Answer 6

Try this

def check_uri
  if Rails.env == 'production' && request && (request.subdomains.first != "www" || request.protocol != 'https://')
    redirect_to "https://www.mysite.com" + request.path, :status => 301 and return
  end
end