Rails redirect with https

Question

I'm maintaining a Ruby on Rails site and I'm confused as to how to perform redirects to relative URLs using the https protocol.

I can successfully create a redirect to a relative URL using http, for example:

redirect_to "/some_directory/"

But I cannot discern how to create a redirect to a URL using the https protocol. I have only been able to do so by using absolute URLS, for example:

redirect_to "https://mysite.com/some_directory/"

I would like to keep my code clean, and using relative URLs seems like a good idea. Does anyone know how to achieve this in Rails?

Answer 1

The ActionController::Base#redirect_to method takes an options hash, one of the parameters of which is :protocol which allows you to call:

redirect_to :protocol => 'https://', 
            :controller => 'some_controller', 
            :action => 'index'

See the definition for #redirect_to and #url_for for more info on the options.

---

Alternatively, and especially if SSL is to be used for all your controller actions, you could take a more declarative approach using a before_filter. In ApplicationController you could define the following method:

def redirect_to_https
    redirect_to :protocol => "https://" unless (request.ssl? || request.local?)
end

You can then add filters in your those controllers which have actions requiring SSL, e.g:

class YourController
    before_filter :redirect_to_https, :only => ["index", "show"]
end

Or, if you require SSL across your entire app, declare the filter in ApplicationController:

class ApplicationController
    before_filter :redirect_to_https
end