htaccess redirect to https://www

Question

I have the following htaccess code:

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>  RewriteEngine On RewriteCond !{HTTPS} off RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://www.%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [L,R=301] RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\. RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://www.%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [L,R=301]  </IfModule> 

I want my site to be redirected to https://www. with HTTPS, and enforcing the www. subdomain, but when I access http://www. (without HTTPS), it does not redirect me to https://www with HTTPS.

Answer 1

To first force HTTPS, you must check the correct environment variable %{HTTPS} off, but your rule above then prepends the www. Since you have a second rule to enforce www., don't use it in the first rule.

RewriteEngine On RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off # First rewrite to HTTPS: # Don't put www. here. If it is already there it will be included, if not # the subsequent rule will catch it. RewriteRule .* https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [L,R=301] # Now, rewrite any request to the wrong domain to use www. # [NC] is a case-insensitive match RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\. [NC] RewriteRule .* https://www.%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [L,R=301] 

About proxying

When behind some forms of proxying, whereby the client is connecting via HTTPS to a proxy, load balancer, Passenger application, etc., the %{HTTPS} variable may never be on and cause a rewrite loop. This is because your application is actually receiving plain HTTP traffic even though the client and the proxy/load balancer are using HTTPS. In these cases, check the X-Forwarded-Proto header instead of the %{HTTPS} variable. This answer shows the appropriate process