How to create an HTTPS server in Node.js?

Given an SSL key and certificate, how does one create an HTTPS service?

Solution 1:

The Express API doc spells this out pretty clearly.

Additionally this answer gives the steps to create a self-signed certificate.

I have added some comments and a snippet from the Node.js HTTPS documentation:

var express = require('express');
var https = require('https');
var http = require('http');
var fs = require('fs');

// This line is from the Node.js HTTPS documentation.
var options = {
  key: fs.readFileSync('test/fixtures/keys/agent2-key.pem'),
  cert: fs.readFileSync('test/fixtures/keys/agent2-cert.cert')
};

// Create a service (the app object is just a callback).
var app = express();

// Create an HTTP service.
http.createServer(app).listen(80);
// Create an HTTPS service identical to the HTTP service.
https.createServer(options, app).listen(443);

Solution 2:

For Node 0.3.4 and above all the way up to the current LTS (v16 at the time of this edit), https://nodejs.org/api/https.html#httpscreateserveroptions-requestlistener has all the example code you need:

const https = require(`https`);
const fs = require(`fs`);

const options = {
  key: fs.readFileSync(`test/fixtures/keys/agent2-key.pem`),
  cert: fs.readFileSync(`test/fixtures/keys/agent2-cert.pem`)
};

https.createServer(options, (req, res) => {
  res.writeHead(200);
  res.end(`hello world\n`);
}).listen(8000);

Note that if want to use Let's Encrypt's certificates using the certbot tool, the private key is called privkey.pem and the certificate is called fullchain.pem:

const certDir = `/etc/letsencrypt/live`;
const domain = `YourDomainName`;
const options = {
  key: fs.readFileSync(`${certDir}/${domain}/privkey.pem`),
  cert: fs.readFileSync(`${certDir}/${domain}/fullchain.pem`)
};

Solution 3:

Found this question while googling "node https" but the example in the accepted answer is very old - taken from the docs of the current (v0.10) version of node, it should look like this:

var https = require('https');
var fs = require('fs');

var options = {
  key: fs.readFileSync('test/fixtures/keys/agent2-key.pem'),
  cert: fs.readFileSync('test/fixtures/keys/agent2-cert.pem')
};

https.createServer(options, function (req, res) {
  res.writeHead(200);
  res.end("hello world\n");
}).listen(8000);

Solution 4:

The above answers are good but with Express and node this will work fine.

Since express create the app for you, I'll skip that here.

var express = require('express')
  , fs = require('fs')
  , routes = require('./routes');

var privateKey = fs.readFileSync('cert/key.pem').toString();
var certificate = fs.readFileSync('cert/certificate.pem').toString();  

// To enable HTTPS
var app = module.exports = express.createServer({key: privateKey, cert: certificate});

Solution 5:

The minimal setup for an HTTPS server in Node.js would be something like this :

var https = require('https');
var fs = require('fs');

var httpsOptions = {
    key: fs.readFileSync('path/to/server-key.pem'),
    cert: fs.readFileSync('path/to/server-crt.pem')
};

var app = function (req, res) {
  res.writeHead(200);
  res.end("hello world\n");
}

https.createServer(httpsOptions, app).listen(4433);

If you also want to support http requests, you need to make just this small modification :

var http = require('http');
var https = require('https');
var fs = require('fs');

var httpsOptions = {
    key: fs.readFileSync('path/to/server-key.pem'),
    cert: fs.readFileSync('path/to/server-crt.pem')
};

var app = function (req, res) {
  res.writeHead(200);
  res.end("hello world\n");
}

http.createServer(app).listen(8888);
https.createServer(httpsOptions, app).listen(4433);