.htaccess too many redirects trying to redirect to https://

Question

I have the below from my .htaccess file. I am trying to get my website to redirect to https://www .Now I am not really confident/have a lot of knowledge with Apache so I am stuck. I have tried various different ways from this website to do this but I keep getting the same error of 'redirected too many times'. That is why I thought I'd create my own question.

The website is hosted on 123-reg if that makes any difference.

RewriteEngine on

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\. [NC]
RewriteRule ^ https://www.%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [L,R=301]

# ensure https
RewriteCond %{HTTP:X-Forwarded-Proto} !https
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off
RewriteRule ^ https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [L,R=301]

 #remove / at the end of URL
 RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -d
 RewriteCond %{DOCUMENT_ROOT}/$1/index.html -f
 RewriteRule ^(.+?)/?$ /$1/index.html [L]

<ifModule mod_gzip.c>
mod_gzip_on Yes
mod_gzip_dechunk Yes
mod_gzip_item_include file .(html?|txt|css|js|php|pl)$
mod_gzip_item_include handler ^cgi-script$
mod_gzip_item_include mime ^text/.*
mod_gzip_item_include mime ^application/x-javascript.*
mod_gzip_item_exclude mime ^image/.*
mod_gzip_item_exclude rspheader ^Content-Encoding:.*gzip.*
</ifModule>

<ifModule mod_deflate.c>
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/html text/xml text/css text/plain
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE image/svg+xml application/xhtml+xml application/xml
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/rdf+xml application/rss+xml application/atom+xml
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/javascript application/javascript application/x-javascript application/json
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-font-ttf application/x-font-otf
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE font/truetype font/opentype
</ifModule>

<ifmodule mod_expires.c>
<Filesmatch "\.(jpg|jpeg|png|gif|js|css|swf|ico|woff|mp3)$">
    ExpiresActive on
    ExpiresDefault "access plus 1 year"
</Filesmatch>
</ifmodule>

<ifModule mod_headers.c>
    Header unset ETag
    FileETag None
    <FilesMatch "\.(ico|pdf|flv|jpg|jpeg|png|gif|js|css)$">
        Header unset Last-Modified
    </FilesMatch>
</ifModule>

<IfModule mod_headers.c>
    <FilesMatch "\.(js|css|xml|gz)$">
        Header append Vary: Accept-Encoding
    </FilesMatch>
</IfModule>

Answer 1

With Apache, I usually find it easier to redirect to https on my virtual hosts

on the terminal sudo nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/000-default.conf (march it to the location of your apache2 files)

Then add the redirect rules at the end of your vhost

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{SERVER_NAME} =mywebsite.com [OR]
RewriteCond %{SERVER_NAME} =www.mywebsite.com
RewriteRule ^ https://%{SERVER_NAME}%{REQUEST_URI} [END,NE,R=permanent]

so that your vhost looks something like this

<VirtualHost *:80>
        # The ServerName directive sets the request scheme, hostname and port t$
        # the server uses to identify itself. This is used when creating
        # redirection URLs. In the context of virtual hosts, the ServerName
        # specifies what hostname must appear in the request's Host: header to
        # match this virtual host. For the default virtual host (this file) this
        # value is not decisive as it is used as a last resort host regardless.
        # However, you must set it for any further virtual host explicitly.
        #ServerName www.example.com

        ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost
        DocumentRoot /var/www/html

        # Available loglevels: trace8, ..., trace1, debug, info, notice, warn,
        # error, crit, alert, emerg.
        # It is also possible to configure the loglevel for particular
        # modules, e.g.
        #LogLevel info ssl:warn
        ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log
        CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined

        # For most configuration files from conf-available/, which are
        # enabled or disabled at a global level, it is possible to
        # include a line for only one particular virtual host. For example the
        # following line enables the CGI configuration for this host only
        # after it has been globally disabled with "a2disconf".
        #Include conf-available/serve-cgi-bin.conf

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{SERVER_NAME} =mywebsite.com [OR]
RewriteCond %{SERVER_NAME} =www.mywebsite.com
RewriteRule ^ https://%{SERVER_NAME}%{REQUEST_URI} [END,NE,R=permanent]
</VirtualHost>

Answer 2

After a lot of trial and error. I have finally fixed this by using:

# www redirect
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://www.%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [L,R=301]

# To HTTPS:
RewriteCond %{ENV:HTTPS} !on
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [L,R=301]

Looks like {ENV:HTTPS} did the trick for me.