Force https://www. for Codeigniter in htaccess with mod_rewrite

Question

I'm using Codeigniter and following these instructions to force ssl but all requests are being redirected to

http://staging.example.com/index.php/https:/staging.example.com

My .htaccess is:

### Canonicalize codeigniter URLs

# Enforce SSL https://www. 
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} !=on
RewriteRule ^ https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [L,R=301]

###
# Removes access to the system folder by users.
# Additionally this will allow you to create a System.php controller,
# previously this would not have been possible.
# 'system' can be replaced if you have renamed your system folder.
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^system.*
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /index.php/$1 [L]

# Checks to see if the user is attempting to access a valid file,
# such as an image or css document, if this isn't true it sends the
# request to index.php
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php/$1 [L]

Answer 1

You could do it in code instead of using htaccess.

You can create a helper function that will redirect the page to be over SSL, which you call from your controller.

In your helper;

function force_ssl() {
    if (!isset($_SERVER['HTTPS']) || $_SERVER['HTTPS'] != "on") {
        $url = "https://". $_SERVER['SERVER_NAME'] . $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'];
        redirect($url);
        exit;
    }
}

Then in your controller;

class Whatever extends CI_Controller {

    function __construct() {
        parent::__construct();
        $this->load->helper(array('your_ssl_helper'));
    }

    public function index() {
        force_ssl();
        ...
    }
}