Tomcat 7 HTTP to HTTPS redirect

Tomcat 7 HTTP to HTTPS redirect

Intro

The following article shows how to easily redirect HTTP to HTTP in Tomcat 7 servlet container that it always requires secure connection. It was assumed that the following TCP ports are used for that purpose:

• 8080: for HTTP
• 8443: for HTTPS 

Please, follow the exact steps as described below to get it done.

Configuration

1) Update server.xml configuration file in Tomcat home directory and change the following part of its configuration:

<Connector port="8080" protocol="HTTP/1.1"

           connectionTimeout="20000"

           URIEncoding="UTF-8"

           redirectPort="8443" />

to what's shown below:

<Connector port="8080" enableLookups="false"

           redirectPort="8443" />

2) Update web.xml configuration file in Tomcat home directory and add the following content into the end before the closing </web-app> markup:

<security-constraint>

<web-resource-collection>

<web-resource-name>Protected Context</web-resource-name>

<url-pattern>/*</url-pattern>

</web-resource-collection>

<!-- auth-constraint goes here if you requre authentication -->

<user-data-constraint>

<transport-guarantee>CONFIDENTIAL</transport-guarantee>

</user-data-constraint>

</security-constraint>

3) Restart Tomcat servlet container.

You're done! The Tomcat always requires secure connection now.