How to get SSL to work in Rails on Nginx? - ruby-on-rails

Question

I just deployed my Rails 4 app on a VPS with Ubuntu, Unicorn and NginX.
For my app I need to use SSL, so I have this ApplicationController:
class ApplicationController < ActionController::Base
force_ssl
...
end
This is my nginx.conf:
user www-data;
worker_processes 4;
pid /var/run/nginx.pid;
events { worker_connections 1024; }
http {
sendfile on;
tcp_nopush on;
tcp_nodelay on;
keepalive_timeout 65;
types_hash_max_size 2048;
server_tokens off;
server_names_hash_bucket_size 64;
# server_name_in_redirect off;
include /etc/nginx/mime.types;
default_type application/octet-stream;
access_log /var/log/nginx/access.log;
error_log /var/log/nginx/error.log;
gzip on;
gzip_disable "msie6";
gzip_types text/plain text/xml text/css text/comma-separated-values;
upstream app_server { server 127.0.0.1:8080 fail_timeout=0; }
include /etc/nginx/conf.d/*.conf;
include /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/*;
server {
listen 80;
server_name myapp.com;
rewrite ^ https://$server_name$request_uri? permanent;
}
server {
listen 443;
server_name myapp.com;
root /home/rails/public;
index index.htm index.html;
ssl on;
ssl_certificate /etc/ssl/myapp.com.crt;
ssl_certificate_key /etc/ssl/myapp.com.key;
location / {
try_files $uri/index.html $uri.html $uri #app;
}
location #app {
proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme;
proxy_redirect off;
proxy_pass http://app_server;
}
}
}
Everything seems to be working OK. When a request for an http page comes, it gets forwarded to https, which is nice.
However, when trying to change the locale of the application in the browser (through the languages menu), I get this error message in the browser:
Safari can't open the page https://app_server/en/sessions/new
because Safari can't find the server "app server"
In the URL it also says: https://app_server/en/sessions/new
What am I missing here?
I am fairly new to NginX, so maybe someone can help me out here?
Any general advice on how to enhance my code is highly appreciated.

Answer 1

You're using proxy_pass http://app_server; which set Host header to app_server by default. Add proxy_set_header Host $host;, so your application will get right Host.
location #app {
proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme;
proxy_set_header Host $host;
proxy_redirect off;
proxy_pass http://app_server;
}