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Rhys_Davis_2151's avatar
Rhys_Davis_2151
Icon for Nimbostratus rankNimbostratus
Aug 11, 2015

3 part redirect irule query. non www to www to https

Hello All

We recently moved over to F5's from another load balancer product and have been gradually moving our staging and live services over after testing has been completed. However one issue has come up. On our previous load balancer there was a http redirect in place so that when users tried to access our SharePoint site without the www. prefix it would redirect them to a specific url e.g. https://www.sharepointsite.com/sites/homepage.aspx

We have it set in the SharePoint 2013 iApp to redirect http traffic to https but my understanding is to do non www to www. we need a iRule. Is that correct? I realise this may sound a fairly trivial issue but all will become clear shortly.

The reason why this isn't trivial is because I won't be able to test this on our staging area, I can only apply it on live, so I have to ensure I get it right. The reason for this is our staging area is https://staging.sharepointsite.com so the iRule wont be the same as if I was redirecting non www to www.

I've spent some time searching on here and haven't found anyone else in exactly the same situation but did find a rule that I think will work. Please can you advise if what I've written below will work if I introduce it into a SharePoint 2013 iApp's config as a iRule. Or if not can you offer advice on what will work please.

when HTTP_REQUEST {
    if { [string tolower [HTTP::host]] ends_with "sharepointsite.com" } {
        HTTP::redirect "https://www.sharepointsite.com[HTTP::uri]"
    }
}

That to me looks like it should work but I wondered if that maybe wouldn't be the case when introduced to a iApp. Or if it may take issue with the face theres no dot/fullstop/period before the initial sharepointsite.com

Thanks in advance

Rhys.

application delivery
deployment
devops
iApps
iRules
LTM
sharepoint 2013
  • Rhys_Davis_2151's avatar
    Rhys_Davis_2151
    Icon for Nimbostratus rankNimbostratus
    Aug 12, 2015
    OK been some slight developments from the original request and after some reading around...... now have it setup as follows when HTTP_REQUEST { if { [string tolower [HTTP::host]] starts_with "http://sharepointsite.com" } { HTTP::redirect "https://www.sharepointsite.com[HTTP::uri]" } } which should take all the url and redirect it to https and then include all the bits after .com/ I also need to do the same for https so I'm guessing I want when HTTPS_REQUEST { if { [string tolower [HTTP::host]] starts_with "https://sharepointsite.com" } { HTTP::redirect "https://www.sharepointsite.com[HTTP::uri]" } } Does that look right to you all? also will these need to be separate irules or can they be lumped into one?
  • Stanislas_Piro2's avatar
    Stanislas_Piro2
    Icon for Cumulonimbus rankCumulonimbus
    Aug 12, 2015

    Hi,

    Host header does not include scheme... remove https in your if statement.

    for both HTTP and HTTPS, the event is the same (HTTP_REQUEST) : HTTPS is HTTP over SSL

    the irule must be:

    when HTTP_REQUEST {
    if { [string tolower [HTTP::host]] equals "sharepointsite.com" } {
        HTTP::redirect "https://www.sharepointsite.com[HTTP::uri]"
    }
}
  • Arie's avatar
    Arie
    Icon for Altostratus rankAltostratus
    Aug 13, 2015

    If you always want to redirect from HTTP to HTTPS I would recommend using a 301 (permanent redirect) as opposed to the 302 (temporary redirect) that is generated by 

    HTTP::redirect
    . A permanent redirect is cached by clients so it saves on HTTP-requests.

    You accomplish this by replacing 

    HTTP::redirect "https://www.sharepointsite.com[HTTP::uri]"
    with 
    HTTP::respond 301 Location "https://www.sharepointsite.com[HTTP::uri]"
    .

    You can further optimize by using HSTS, which instructs clients to use HTTPS for subsequent requests even if the link specifies HTTP.