[Django]-How to deploy an HTTPS-only site, with Django/nginx?

Here is the solution I’ve worked out so far. There are two parts, configuring nginx, and writing code for Django. The nginx part handles external requests, redirecting http pages to https, and the Django code handles internal URL generation that has an http prefix. (At least, those resulting from a HttpResponseRedirect()). Combined, it seems to work well – as far as I can tell, the client browser never sees an http page that the users didn’t type in themselves.

Part one, nginx configuration

# nginx.conf
# Redirects any requests on port 80 (http) to https:
server {
    listen       80;
    server_name  www.mysite.com mysite.com;
    rewrite ^ https://mysite.com$request_uri? permanent;
#    rewrite ^ https://mysite.com$uri permanent; # also works
}
# django pass-thru via uWSGI, only from https requests:
server {
    listen       443;
    ssl          on;
    ssl_certificate        /etc/ssl/certs/mysite.com.chain.crt;
    ssl_certificate_key    /etc/ssl/private/mysite.com.key;

    server_name  mysite.com;
    location / {
        uwsgi_pass 127.0.0.1:8088;
        include uwsgi_params;
    }
}

Part two A, various secure cookie settings, from settings.py

SERVER_TYPE = "DEV"
SESSION_COOKIE_HTTPONLY = True
SESSION_COOKIE_SECURE = True
CSRF_COOKIE_SECURE = True # currently only in Dev branch of Django.
SESSION_EXPIRE_AT_BROWSER_CLOSE = True

Part two B, Django code

# mysite.utilities.decorators.py
import settings

def HTTPS_Response(request, URL):
    if settings.SERVER_TYPE == "DEV":
        new_URL = URL
    else:
        absolute_URL = request.build_absolute_uri(URL)
        new_URL = "https%s" % absolute_URL[4:]
    return HttpResponseRedirect(new_URL)

# views.py

def show_items(request):
    if request.method == 'POST':
        newURL = handle_post(request)
        return HTTPS_Response(request, newURL) # replaces HttpResponseRedirect()
    else: # request.method == 'GET'
        theForm = handle_get(request)
    csrfContext = RequestContext(request, {'theForm': theForm,})
    return render_to_response('item-search.html', csrfContext)

def handle_post(request):
    URL = reverse('item-found') # name of view in urls.py
    item = request.REQUEST.get('item')
    full_URL = '%s?item=%s' % (URL, item)
    return full_URL

Note that it is possible to re-write HTTPS_Response() as a decorator. The advantage would be – not having to go through all your code and replace HttpResponseRedirect(). The disadvantage – you’d have to put the decorator in front of HttpResponseRedirect(), which is in Django at django.http.__init__.py. I didn’t want to modify Django’s code, but that’s up to you – it’s certainly one option.

if you stick your entire site behind https, you don’t need to worry about it on the django end. (assuming you don’t need to protect your data between nginx and django, only between users and your server)