How to force https on elastic beanstalk?

Question

I can't seem to force https on the free usage tier of elastic beanstalk.

I have tried the following suggestion at How to force https on amazon elastic beanstalk without failing the health check

Using this Apache rewrite rule

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP:X-Forwarded-Proto} !https
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/status$ 
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/version$ 
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/_hostmanager/ 
RewriteRule . https://%{SERVER_NAME}%{REQUEST_URI} [L,R]

When I try that, http requests do not get redirected to https as I would like. Instead, the http page loads normally. I've also tried to use the X-Forwarded-Port header with the same result.

I've also tried the following rewrite rule

RewriteCond %{SERVER_PORT} 80
RewriteRule . https://%{SERVER_NAME}%{REQUEST_URI} [L,R]

And this rule causes a redirect loop. So it would seem that the apache rewrite rules don't pick up the Elastic Load Balancer headers X-Forwarded-Port and X-Forwarded-Proto, but also a redirect loop isn't what I am going for either.

Please help. I am new to AWS, Elastic Beanstalk, and not very familiar with Apache rules. I am not too sure where to go from here. Thanks.

Answer 1

If you use a Load Balanced environment you can follow the instructions for Configuring HTTPS for your AWS Elastic Beanstalk Environment and at the end disable the HTTP port.

Note that currently the AWS Free Usage Tier includes the same amount of hours for an Elastic Load Balancing (ELB) as for an EC2 Micro Instance.