How do you configure WEBrick to use SSL in Rails?

Question

Prior to Rails 3, you could modify the script/server file to add in SSL parameters and tell the server command to use the HTTPS version of WEBrick. Now that all of those scr

Answer 1

An Alternative to SSL/HTTPS on WEBrick: SSL/HTTPS on Thin

As an alternative to trying to set up WEBrick to use HTTPS/SSL for your Rails app, you can try switching to using the Thin server instead, because it comes with convenient options for setting up HTTPS/SSL out-of-the-box.

Installing Thin

First, add Thin as a gem to your Gemfile:

gem 'thin'

Then run bundle install from the command line.

Using Thin HTTPS/SSL for Development Environments

If you just want to test your Rails app using HTTPS/SSL in your local development environment, then you simply run

thin start --ssl

I have to emphasize that this is not suitable for production environments, because you need to use a valid SSL certificate from a Certificate Authority in order for SSL/HTTPS connections to be verifiable and secure.

Additional Options

There are also other options that you can pass to Thin. You can get a full list of them by running thin --help. For example, I like to specify my own ip-address and port, as well as daemonizing Thin into a background process:

thin start --ssl \
  --address  \
  --port  \
  --daemonize

Using Thin HTTPS/SSL with an SSL Certificate

If you want to tell Thin to use an SSL certificate (for example, one that you've obtained from a valid Certificate Authority), then you can use these options:

thin start --ssl \
  --ssl-cert-file  \
  --ssl-key-file