Websockets with Nginx and ssl handshake

Question

I have the application written in Rails and Ember frontend for it. It is accessible by nginx server. Here is configuration for Rails part:

upstream app_project_app {
  server unix:///tmp/project.sock fail_timeout=0;
}

And here is configuration for ember part:

server {
  listen 80;
  server_name project.demo.domain.pl;
  root /home/lunar/apps/project-ember/current;
  try_files /system/maintenance.html $uri/index.html $uri.html $uri @app;
  access_log /var/log/nginx/project_app_access.log;
  error_log /var/log/nginx/project_app_error.log;

  keepalive_timeout 5;
  proxy_read_timeout 60;
  proxy_send_timeout 60;
  proxy_connect_timeout 60;

  if ($request_method !~ ^(GET|HEAD|PUT|POST|DELETE|OPTIONS)$ ){
    return 405;
  }

  location ~ ^/assets/ {
    expires max;
    add_header Cache-Control public;

    add_header ETag "";
    break;
  }

  location = /favicon.ico {
    expires    max;
    add_header Cache-Control public;
  }


  location / {
    try_files $uri/index.html $uri.html $uri @app;
    error_page 404              /404.html;
    error_page 422              /422.html;
    error_page 500 502 503 504  /500.html;
    error_page 403              /403.html;
  }

  location @app {
    proxy_set_header Host $http_host;
    proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
    proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme;
    proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
    proxy_pass http://app_project_app;
  }
}

Now the application grown and has websockets server (using faye). And the client can't connect to the server:

WebSocket connection to 'ws://project.demo.domain.pl/faye' failed: Error during WebSocket handshake: Unexpected response code: 400

I've read, that I need to enable SSL for this handshake. How can I do this in nginx? I also read, that I don't need to use https and I can use SSL only for websockets, is it true? And if yes, how should look configuration for nginx in this case?

Answer 1

For websocket support you need add the following directives in your @app location block

proxy_http_version 1.1;
proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
proxy_set_header Connection "upgrade”;

Read more here