Question

What do I need to do to get traffic to my ruby on rails app to use https? I have a certificate installed and if I manually type in “https://” in the address bar when accessing the site the little lock icon appears, but just manually going to http://www.example-app.com in my browser sends traffic through http://.

Is there some one-line config or is it more complicated than that? I’ve never had to deal with SSL before, so excuse me if I sound like I don’t know what’s going on.

I’m hosting at MediaTemple in a (gs), if that matters or anyone has experience with such a setup.

Answer 1

Check out the ssl_requirement gem.

It lets you specify in your controllers which actions should be served over https and which actions can be served over https. It will then take care of redirecting from http to https and vice-versa.

From the documentation:

class ApplicationController < ActiveRecord::Base
  include SslRequirement
end

class AccountController < ApplicationController
  ssl_required :signup, :payment
  ssl_allowed :index

  def signup
    # Non-SSL access will be redirected to SSL
  end

  def payment
    # Non-SSL access will be redirected to SSL
  end

  def index
    # This action will work either with or without SSL
  end

  def other
    # SSL access will be redirected to non-SSL
  end
end