How do I redirect HTTPS to HTTP on NGINX?

Question

Is there a way to redirect HTTPS requests to HTTP by adding a rule in the domain's vhost file?

Answer 1

Why is something like that useful? At first look I wasn't sure if it could be done. But it presented an interesting question.

You might try putting a redirect statement in your config file and restarting your server. Two possibilities might happen:

1. The server will issue the redirect - what you seem to want.
2. The server will first do the https exchange, and THEN issue the redirect, in which case, what's the point?

Will add more if I come up with something more concrete.

UPDATE: (couple of hours later) You could try this. You need to put this in your nginx.conf file -

server {        listen 443;        server_name _ *;        rewrite ^(.*) http://$host$1 permanent;  } 

Sends a permanent redirect to the client. I am assuming you are using port 443 (default) for https.

server {     listen      80;     server_name _ *;     ... } 

Add this so that your normal http requests on port 80 are undisturbed.

UPDATE: 18th Dec 2016 - server_name _ should be used instead of server_name _ * in nginx versions > 0.6.25 (thanks to @Luca Steeb)