
## Table of Contents

1. [Introduction](#introduction)
2. [Setup EC2 Instance](#setup-ec2-instance)
3. [Setup Sample Express.js App](#setup-sample-expressjs-app)
4. [Install Nginx at Amazon Linux](#install-nginx-at-amazon-linux)
5. [Restart the Nginx Service](#restart-the-nginx-service)
6. [Site is Up](#site-is-up)
7. [Handle HTTP to HTTPS Redirect](#handle-http-to-https-redirect)
8. [Conclusion](#conclusion)

## Introduction

This blog shows how to redirect from HTTP to HTTPS on an Amazon Linux EC2
Instance. The example below is a simple Express.js app running under Nginx
with PM2.

## Setup EC2 Instance

Here, we'd like to set up an EC2 Instance. First, you need to have an AWS
account. Once you have an AWS account, you can go to EC2 to set up the instance.

Click Launch Instance at the EC2 page.

Select Amazon Linux 2 AMI, since it's eligible for the free tier.

Select t2.micro.

At the Configure Instance Details page, leave everything as default —
default VPC and subnet. Make sure the VPC and subnet are set up in a way that has public
access.

Click Add Storage, and leave the default setting.

Click and go to Configure Security Group. Make sure the inbound rule has opened
ports 80, 22, and 443, because we'd like the website to be accessible by HTTP and HTTPS and
to be able to SSH in.

Create a key pair if you don't have one.

Once the EC2 Linux Instance setup is finished, SSH into the instance.

## Setup Sample Express.js App

Once you SSH into the Linux instance, to make everything easier, just run this:

```
sudo su
```

### Install Node.js

Run the following command to install Node.js on Amazon Linux.

```
curl -fsSL https://rpm.nodesource.com/setup_lts.x | sudo bash -
yum -y install nodejs
```

### Create Simple Express.js App

The following commands create the folder, run npm init, install Express,
and create the server.js file.

```
mkdir my-app && cd my-app
npm init -y
npm install express
nano server.js
```

Now, add the following code to server.js. Once you run
**node server.js**, you start an Express web server running on
port 3000.

```
const express = require('express');
const app = express();
const port = 3000;

app.get('/', (req, res) => {
res.send('yo');
});

app.listen(port, () => {
console.info('app start');
});
```

### PM2 to Keep Node.js Running

Now, you can use PM2 to keep the Node.js app running with the following
commands.

Once you install PM2 and start the app, you can try `curl http://localhost:3000`. You should be able to
see the response from the home route.

```
npm i -g pm2@2.4.3
pm2 start server.js
```

## Install Nginx at Amazon Linux

The following command will install Nginx on the Amazon Linux instance. Once the setup
is finished, we'll update the config to handle the HTTP to HTTPS redirect.

```
sudo amazon-linux-extras install nginx1
```

The Nginx config should exist at /etc/nginx/nginx.conf.

```
cd /etc/nginx
```

Open the nginx.conf file:

```
nano nginx.conf
```

First, we'll set up Nginx to reverse proxy to Express.js, which is running
on port 3000. You can notice that before the change, if you hit the EC2 public IP
address, you will get the message from Chrome: "This site can't be reached..."

```
location / {
proxy_pass http://localhost:3000;
}
```

## Restart the Nginx Service

```
service nginx restart
```

## Site is Up

Now, if you hit the IP address, you should be able to see the site is up and
running, because Nginx routes port 80 to the Express.js port 3000.

## Handle HTTP to HTTPS Redirect

Add the below code to the nginx.conf for redirecting from HTTP to HTTPS.

```
if ($http_x_forwarded_proto = 'http'){
    return 301 https://$host$request_uri;
    }
```

That should be it for redirecting your app from HTTP to HTTPS by using Nginx on
Amazon Linux. If you just use the IP address of the EC2, you probably won't see
the redirect. The setup I used was a Classic Load Balancer in front of
the EC2, with the Classic Load Balancer having an HTTPS certificate set up. You can
get a free one from AWS ACM. I also had Route 53 routing the domain to
the Classic Load Balancer, so if I visit http://my-domain, it
redirects from http://my-domain to https://my-domain.

## Conclusion

Alternatively, you could write the redirect logic at the code level, or if you are
running an Application Load Balancer, you can set up a redirect rule on that as
well.


This blog shows how to redirect from HTTP to HTTPS by using Nginx at Amazon Linux EC2 Instance.

Nginx

How to Redirect HTTP to HTTPS on Amazon Linux with Node.js