Nginx – Proxy HTTPS requests to a HTTP backend with NGINX

httpsnginxreverse-proxy

I have nginx configured to be my externally visible webserver which talks to a backend over HTTP.

The scenario I want to achieve is:

Client makes HTTP request to nginx which is redirect to the same URL but over HTTPS
nginx proxies request over HTTP to the backend
nginx receives response from backend over HTTP.
nginx passes this back to the client over HTTPS

My current config (where backend is configured correctly) is:

server {
        listen       80;
        server_name  localhost;

        location ~ .* {
            proxy_pass http://backend;
            proxy_redirect http://backend https://$host;
            proxy_set_header Host $host;
            }
        }

My problem is the response to the client (step 4) is sent over HTTP not HTTPS. Any ideas?

Best Answer

The type of proxy you are trying to set up is called a reverse proxy. A quick search for reverse proxy nginx got me this page:

http://intranation.com/entries/2008/09/using-nginx-reverse-proxy/

In addition to adding some useful features like an X-Forwarded-For header (which will give your app visibility into the actual source IP), it specifically does:

proxy_redirect off

Good luck! :)

Correct way in new versions of nginx

Turn out my first answer to this question was correct at certain time, but it turned into another pitfall - to stay up to date please check Taxing rewrite pitfalls

I have been corrected by many SE users, so the credit goes to them, but more importantly, here is the correct code:

server {
       listen         80;
       server_name    my.domain.com;
       return         301 https://$server_name$request_uri;
}

server {
       listen         443 ssl;
       server_name    my.domain.com;
       # add Strict-Transport-Security to prevent man in the middle attacks
       add_header Strict-Transport-Security "max-age=31536000" always; 

       [....]
}

Nginx – How to make nginx reverse proxy let 503 error pages pass through to client

Turns out there was truly an error while serving the 503 page so nginx was forwarding the response correctly afterall.

However, the relevant nginx setting is proxy_intercept_errors off; which is already the default..

Best Answer

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