How to make “HTTPS redirect” work on WebSphere App

Question

I want make HTTP Redirect work on WebSphere Application Server Liberty Profile (WLP). For example:-

When user types: http://localhost:8080/helloworld, the browser should automatically go (be redirected) to https://localhost:9443/helloworld

To achieve this, I followed this document, Section 6.2, page no. 136.

Below is the sample server.xml and web.xml:-

server.xml

<server description="new server">

<!-- Enable features -->
<featureManager>
    <feature>jsp-2.2</feature>
    <feature>wab-1.0</feature>
    <feature>jaxrs-1.1</feature>
    <feature>blueprint-1.0</feature>
    <feature>localConnector-1.0</feature>
    <feature>ssl-1.0</feature>
    <feature>appSecurity-2.0</feature>
</featureManager>

<httpEndpoint host="localhost" httpPort="8081" httpsPort="9442" id="defaultHttpEndpoint">
</httpEndpoint>

<applicationMonitor updateTrigger="mbean"/>
<keyStore id="defaultKeyStore" password="{xor}Lz4sLCgwLTtu"/>

<application id="Hello.app" location="Hello.app.eba" name="Hello.app" type="eba"/>

web.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<web-app id="WebApp_ID" version="3.0" xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee/web-app_3_0.xsd">
    <display-name>Hello</display-name>

    <security-constraint>
        <display-name>HTTPS Redirect Security Constraint</display-name>
        <web-resource-collection>
            <web-resource-name>Sample Web Service service</web-resource-name>
            <url-pattern>/Hello</url-pattern>
            <http-method>GET</http-method>

        </web-resource-collection>
        <user-data-constraint>
            <transport-guarantee>CONFIDENTIAL</transport-guarantee>
        </user-data-constraint>
    </security-constraint>
</web-app>

Have removed the <servlet> and <servlet-mapping> tag for brevity.

Below are the versions that I am using:- Java 7, WLP 8.5.5, Eclipse Juno, Google Chrome.

Any help, guidelines on why HTTPS redirect is not working will be much appreciated.

Answer 1

To make HTTPS Redirect work on WLP, following points should be taken care of:-

1. Add users, roles, and passwords in server.xml of WLP.
2. Bind the application to the security role.
3. Add appSecurity-2.0 feature in server.xml of WLP.
4. Add following tags in web.xml
   1. <login-config>
   2. <security-constraint>
   3. <security-constraint><web-resource-name></security-constraint>
   4. <security-constraint><auth-constraint></security-constraint>
   5. <security-constraint><user-data-constraint></security-constraint>

Below are the steps in detail:-

1. Add users, roles, and passwords in server.xml of WLP.

<basicRegistry id="MyRegistry">
    <user password="{xor}Mjo6MT4z" name="anuroop" />
    <group name="MyGroup">
        <member name="anuroop" />
    </group>
</basicRegistry>

2. Bind the application to the security role.

<application id="Hello.app" location="Hello.app.eba" name="Hello.app" type="eba">
    <application-bnd>
        <security-role name="Manager">
        <group name="MyGroup" />
    </security-role>
    </application-bnd>
</application>

3. Add appSecurity-2.0 feature in server.xml of WLP.

<featureManager>
    <feature>appSecurity-2.0</feature>
</featureManager>

4.1, 4.2, 4.3, 4.4, 4.5

<login-config>
    <auth-method>FORM</auth-method>
    <realm-name>BasicRegistry</realm-name>
    <form-login-config>
        <form-login-page>/Login.jsp</form-login-page>
        <form-error-page>/LoginError.jsp</form-error-page>
    </form-login-config>
</login-config>

<security-constraint>

        <display-name>HTTPS Redirect Security Constraint</display-name>
        <web-resource-collection>
            <web-resource-name>Sample Web Service service</web-resource-name>
            <url-pattern>/Hello</url-pattern>
            <http-method>GET</http-method>
        </web-resource-collection>

    <auth-constraint>
        <role-name>Manager</role-name>
    </auth-constraint>

    <user-data-constraint>
    <description>Ensure to allow only confidential communication</description>
    <transport-guarantee>CONFIDENTIAL</transport-guarantee>
    </user-data-constraint>

</security-constraint>

Answer 2

I suspect the problem is in your security-constraint. Looking at it I would suggest changing your url-pattern to be:

/helloworld

rather than:

/Hello

If you want to match multiple resources you can use wildcards such as:

1. /* - matches everything
2. /helloworld/* - matches everything that has helloworld/ in the url path
3. *.jsp - matches all files with a jsp extension

Answer 3

I solved this a different way, but I think the accepted answer may be better. You can write a servlet filter and then modify the web.xml to associate it with a path.

The web.xml code:

  <web-app id="WebApp">
      <filter>
        <filter-name>HTTPSFilter</filter-name>
        <filter-class>
        HTTPSFilter
        </filter-class>
    </filter>
    <filter-mapping>
        <filter-name>HTTPSFilter</filter-name>
        <url-pattern>/*</url-pattern>
    </filter-mapping>
    ...
 </web-app>

The filter code:

public class HTTPSFilter implements Filter {
    public void doFilter(ServletRequest req, 
                         ServletResponse res,
                         FilterChain chain) throws IOException, ServletException {

        HttpServletRequest request = (HttpServletRequest) req;
        HttpServletResponse response = (HttpServletResponse) res;

        // Forward to HTTPS if insecure HTTP was used
        if(!req.getScheme().startsWith("https")) {
            // Modify the Response object to be the SSL version of the URL
            String host         = request.getLocalName();

            String URI         = request.getRequestURI();
            if(URI == null) { URI = ""; }

            String queryString  = request.getQueryString();
            if(queryString == null) { queryString = ""; }

            response.sendRedirect("https://" + host + ":9443" + URI + ("".equalsIgnoreCase(queryString) ? "":"?") + queryString);
        }

        chain.doFilter(req, res);
    }
    public void init(FilterConfig config) throws ServletException {
    }
    public void destroy() {
    }
}