Redirecting from naked domain to www with node/express?

[Felix E. Klee]

I am hosting an express.js application on nodejitsu.com. Now, I have
assigned two domain names to it:

example.com
www.example.com

This works (although, this morning there were some glitches). Now, I
would like to always redirect:

example.com -> www.example.com
example.com/some/page.html -> www.example.com/some/page.html
...

Is there an easy way to achieve that using routing from within
node/express?

[Alan Hoffmeister]

I think that the correct way is to asign a CNAME for "www.example.com"
in your dns manager redirecting it to "example.com".

But yep, you can do this in express by writting a middleware that
detect the called host name and redirect the user if necessary.

You would be able to get more information at Express.js list:
https://groups.google.com/group/express-js

--
Alan Hoffmeister


2012/6/4 Felix E. Klee <felix...@inka.de>:

> --
> Job Board: http://jobs.nodejs.org/
> Posting guidelines: https://github.com/joyent/node/wiki/Mailing-List-Posting-Guidelines
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
> Groups "nodejs" group.
> To post to this group, send email to nod...@googlegroups.com
> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
> nodejs+un...@googlegroups.com
> For more options, visit this group at
> http://groups.google.com/group/nodejs?hl=en?hl=en

[Felix E. Klee]

On Mon, Jun 4, 2012 at 2:31 PM, Alan Hoffmeister
<alanhof...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I think that the correct way is to asign a CNAME for "www.example.com"
> in your dns manager redirecting it to "example.com".

Setting a CNAME should not make a difference to the current setup. I
already have identical A records for www.example.com and example.com.
And this works. What I want, though, is redirection.

> But yep, you can do this in express by writting a middleware that
> detect the called host name and redirect the user if necessary.

Thanks for the suggestion! Perhaps there is already a middleware that
does this.

[Oliver Leics]

It should be something like this:

express.use(function(req, res, next) {
if(req.headers.host === 'example.com') {
res.writeHead(303, {'Location': 'http://www.example.com'+req.url})
res.end()
}
})

I did not test this.
I'm not even using express :-D
But something like this should do the trick.

> --
> Job Board: http://jobs.nodejs.org/
> Posting guidelines: https://github.com/joyent/node/wiki/Mailing-List-Posting-Guidelines
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
> Groups "nodejs" group.
> To post to this group, send email to nod...@googlegroups.com
> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
> nodejs+un...@googlegroups.com
> For more options, visit this group at
> http://groups.google.com/group/nodejs?hl=en?hl=en

--
Oliver Leics @ G+
https://plus.google.com/112912441146721682527

[Felix E. Klee]

On Mon, Jun 4, 2012 at 2:51 PM, Oliver Leics <oliver...@gmail.com> wrote:
> It should be something like this:
>

> [...]

Thanks! It's similar to something I just found on GitHub:

https://github.com/nodejitsu/node-http-proxy/issues/37#issuecomment-1068224

(though, the reporter of the issue wants to do the opposite)

[Felix E. Klee]

On Mon, Jun 4, 2012 at 2:51 PM, Oliver Leics <oliver...@gmail.com>
wrote:

> express.use(function(req, res, next) {
> if(req.headers.host === 'example.com') {
> res.writeHead(303, {'Location': 'http://www.example.com'+req.url})
> res.end()
> }
> })

That made me learn a little about middleware, a new concept to me, and I
really like it. In the end I implemented basically what you proposed,
plus `next()` in the else clause.

[Oliver Leics]

Middleware is a huge word for such a small yet powerful interface.

And yes, the next() call was missing.

Most nodejs code does not use the else-clause, but early return
instead. Nicer to read, fewer to type and some benchmarks showed a
slight speed-improvement.

The code would then be like this:

express.use(function(req, res, next) {
if(req.headers.host === 'example.com') {

return res.send({'Location': 'http://www.example.com'+req.url}, 301)
}
next()
})

This should be the shortest implementation according to
http://expressjs.com/guide.html
and .send() of express.

[Tim Caswell]

I will mention that most browsers send the port as part of the host header.  So if you're testing locally using a custom /etc/hosts on port 8080 (or just using port 8080 on the production machine), you'll need to account for that in the host routing.

[Felix E. Klee]

On Mon, Jun 4, 2012 at 5:07 PM, Tim Caswell <t...@creationix.com> wrote:
> So if you're testing locally [...]

Thanks for the suggestion. But that's not necessary: The code is for
production only, with the if clause checking the domain.

[Felix E. Klee]

On Mon, Jun 4, 2012 at 5:02 PM, Oliver Leics <oliver...@gmail.com>
wrote:
> Nicer to read,

Matter of taste.

> fewer to type and some benchmarks showed a slight speed-improvement.

Well, I guess this can be optimized with tools such as the Closure
Compiler.

> express.use(function(req, res, next) {
> if(req.headers.host === 'example.com') {
> return res.send({'Location': 'http://www.example.com'+req.url}, 301)
> }
> next()
> })

Thanks!

[Oliver Leics]

On Mon, Jun 4, 2012 at 5:07 PM, Tim Caswell <t...@creationix.com> wrote:

> I will mention that most browsers send the port as part of the host header.

Good point. I'm not sure if this is the case for port 80 too, but
let's stay on the save side:

express.use(function(req, res, next) {
if(req.headers.host.split(':',1)[0] === 'example.com') {

return res.send({'Location': 'http://www.example.com'+req.url}, 301)
}
next()
})

And what about case sensitivity?

if(req.headers.host.split(':',1)[0].toLowerCase() === 'example.com')

-o

[Felix E. Klee]

Updated:

if (req.headers.host.split(':', 1)[0].toLowerCase() ===
'example.com') {
res.header('Location', 'http://www.example.com' + req.url);
return res.send(301);
}
next();

[Felix E. Klee]

On Tue, Oct 9, 2012 at 7:45 AM, Anthony Ettinger <etti...@gmail.com>
wrote:
> I just created a module to do domain redirecting on npm:
> https://npmjs.org/package/express-force-domain

Cool!

[Isaac Schlueter]

You can also use canonical-host for this:

https://npmjs.org/package/canonical-host

var canon = require("canonical-host")('https://hostname.com')
app.use(canon)

It also supports specific port numbers, https/http, etc. That's what
I'm using to redirect npm.im to npmjs.org.

[Felix E. Klee]

On Tue, Oct 9, 2012 at 10:12 PM, Isaac Schlueter <i...@izs.me> wrote:
> You can also use canonical-host for this: [...]

Thanks! It's good to know the options.

[CoolAJ86]

var nowww = require('nowww');

connect.use(nowww);

I believe `express.use(nowww);` should work the same.

https://npmjs.org/package/nowww

https://github.com/coolaj86/steve/tree/master/connect-nowww

[CoolAJ86]

typo. should be

connect.use(nowww())