Nginx: force SSL on one path, non-SSL on others

Question

How do I set up Nginx conf file to force SSL on only one of the paths in my site and non-SSL on all the rest?

For example, I want all of the URLs under /user to be https but all the rest of the URLs to be http.

For the first part I have:

rewrite ^/user(.*) https://$http_host$request_uri?;

I don't want to use "if". I assume it would take advantage of order of operation but I don't want to end up in a loop.

Answer 1

In your nginx configuration, you should have two "server" areas. One for port 80, and one for port 443 (non-SSL and SSL). Simply add a location in your non-SSL website to redirect to your SSL page.

server {
    root /var/www/
    location / {
    }
    location /user {
        rewrite ^ https://$http_host$request_uri? permanent;
    }
}

it will forward all traffic that ends up at /user to your https:// server.

Then, in your 443 server, you do the opposite.

server {
    listen 443;
    root /var/www/
    location / {
        rewrite ^ http://$http_host$request_uri? permanent;
    }
    location /user {
    }
}