Force ssl within a Node/Express web using AWS ECS

Question

I have a cluster (that could have N instances in autoscaling) and I have a service with a website done in Node/Express.

I have a Elastic Load Balancer which has a Target Group and the Listener points certain path to this target group.

Everything works as expected, the website loads, and I can access with and without https but how could I make the HTTPS mandatory redirecting from HTTP? I don't have any proxy in ECS (don't know if nginx-proxy supports several instances in my cluster)

Thanks

Answer 1

Update Jul 25, 2018: Elastic Load Balancing Announces Support for Redirects and Fixed Responses for Application Load Balancer. You can find more information in AWS listener rules.

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You cannot do the HTTP to HTTPS redirect on your ELB/ALB.

There are multiple approaches to do it in AWS.

• Use AWS CloudFront in front of your application and do the SSL redirect there. You have the benefit of edge caching at CDN but will cost more.
• Having a Nginx proxy container like Jwilder Nginx Proxy in front of your NodeJS/Express containers and enforce redirect at proxy. This is an approach if you have common rules for all of your NodeJS/Express containers such as HTTP to HTTPS redirect.
• Use a docker image for NodeJS/Express containers which has Nginx internally.

Note: Since you are using Node/Express its a best practice to have a web server like Nginx in front of it. Check the following Stackoverflow Q/A for more details.