Force HTTPS on .htaccess but only on production

Question

I have been looking around for a snippet of code that will force https:// . I've found this:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} !=on
RewriteRule ^ https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [L,R=301]

The problem is when I want to work on local so a url like "localhost" or "example.dev" it tries to redirect to https://localhost (it doesn't work).

How do I solve this?

(so to sum it all up, I want the snippet above to work only when I use it on production, eg "example.com")

Answer 1

I want the snippet above to work only when I use it on production, eg example.com )

You can restrict your rule to only target example.com using a rewrite condition:

RewriteEngine On

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^(www\.)?example\.com$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} !=on
RewriteRule ^ https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [L,NE,R=301]

Answer 2

This is somewhat advanced but you can try to put your servers in a file called servers.txt

RewriteEngine on
RewriteMap lb rnd:servers.txt
RewriteRule ^/(.*) http://${lb:servers}/$1 [P,L]
serverlist.txt will contain a list of the servers:

## serverlist.txt file con
servers localhost.example.com|server1.example.com

The above answer is good enough with local and production differences in mod rewrite behavior. I would version the .htaccess in git or subversion (which ever you use) in that case.

This is mainly for load balancing but you can apply that in your mechanism.

Answer 3

For Apache, put your rules within <IfModule mod_ssl.c></IfModule> block, and disable ssl module on your local server.

<IfModule mod_ssl.c>
  RewriteEngine On
  RewriteCond %{HTTPS} !=on
  RewriteRule ^ https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [L,R=301]
</IfModule>