Redirect from HTTP to HTTPS and viceversa with Apache ProxyPass

In this post I configure a url redirection from HTTP to HTTPS and viceversa using the Apache mod_proxy and the ProxyPass directive. I assume an environment consisting of two hosts: a Web Server Apache in front of a  Tomcat Applicaton Server. In the following first example the Apache ProxyPass redirects the HTTP requests to theSSL port 8443 of the Tomcat Server. In the second example the Apache Web Server is configured to accept SSL connections, so a self-signed certificate is locally installed and the requests are redirected from HTTPS to the non-ssl url of Tomcat Server.

Example 1. From Apache HTTP to Tomcat HTTPS

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$ yum install mod_ssl $ vi /etc/httpd/conf.d/virtual_hosts.conf

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NameVirtualHost *:80 <VirtualHost *:80>         ServerName mysite.com         SSLProxyEngine On         RequestHeader set Front-End-Https "On"         CacheDisable *         ProxyPass /myapp https://tomcat-host:8443/myapp         ProxyPassReverse /myapp https://tomcat-host:8443/myapp         RedirectMatch ^/$ http://mysite.com/myapp </VirtualHost>

Example 2. From Apache HTTPS to Tomcat HTTP

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$ yum install mod_ssl openssl   $ mkdir /etc/httpd/certs $ cd /etc/httpd/certs $ openssl genrsa -out mysite.com.key 1024 $ openssl req -new -key mysite.com.key -out mysite.com.csr $ openssl x509 -req -days 100000 -in mysite.com.csr -signkey mysite.com.key -out mysite.com.crt

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$ vi  /etc/httpd/conf.d/ssl.conf SSLCertificateFile /etc/httpd/certs/mysite.com.crt SSLCertificateKeyFile /etc/httpd/certs/mysite.com.key   $ vi /etc/httpd/conf.d/virtual_hosts.conf

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NameVirtualHost *:443 <VirtualHost *:443>         ServerName mysite.com         ProxyPass /myapp http://tomcat-host:8080/myapp         ProxyPassReverse /myapp http://tomcat-host:8080/myapp         RedirectMatch ^/$ https://mysite.com/myapp         SSLEngine on         SSLCertificateFile /etc/httpd/certs/mysite.com.crt         SSLCertificateKeyFile /etc/httpd/certs/mysite.com.key </VirtualHost>