Question

We have our site running on HTTPS. Is there a way to accept HTTP request for URLs containing /public/? For all other HTTP requests they should be redirected to HTTPS.

I have RoR application running on apache + passenger.

EDIT

Since the assets (/public/) requests will explicitly be on HTTP, how about creating another VHOST to handle HTTP requests. And for any requests other than /public/ directly could be redirected to HTTPS? If we can go this way how can we set this up in VHOST for HTTP?

EDIT 2

I am sorry, I should have been elaborated this in first place. Here is our setup. There two separate applications. One is running on HTTPS (S) and other on HTTP (P). The app P fetches data (a full HTML page, call it page) from S and render to client. The CSS file used in page is located on ‘S’ so I need to HTTPS in CSS link. I want to use HTTP instead to refer the CSS.

Answer 1

You can use mod_rewrite and place a .htaccess file with the below contents in your DocumentRoot.

Options +FollowSymLinks -MultiViews -Indexes
RewriteEngine on
RewriteBase /

RewriteCond %{ENV:REDIRECT_STATUS} 200
RewriteRule ^ - [L]

Rewritecond %{REQUEST_URI} .*/public/.* [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} on
RewriteRule ^ http://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [L,R=301]

Rewritecond %{REQUEST_URI} !.*/public/.* [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off
RewriteRule ^ https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [L,R=301]

---

NameVirtualHost *:80

Listen 80
Listen 443

<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerAdmin [e-mail]
DocumentRoot /pathto/DocumentRoot
ServerName domain.com

ErrorLog path/to/your-error_log
CustomLog path/to/your-access_log common

RewriteEngine on
RewriteBase /

Rewritecond %{REQUEST_URI} !.*/public/.*$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^ https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [L,R=301]

</VirtualHost>


<VirtualHost *:443>
ServerAdmin [e-mail]
DocumentRoot /pathto/DocumentRoot
ServerName domain.com

ErrorLog path/to/your-error_log
CustomLog path/to/your-access_log common

RewriteEngine on
RewriteBase /
Rewritecond %{REQUEST_URI} .*/public/.*$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^ http://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [L,R=301]

#All the other directives pertaining to SSL add below

</VirtualHost>