As Strapi does not handle SSL directly and hosting a Node.js service on the "edge" network is not a secure solution it is recommended that you use some sort of proxy application such as Nginx, Apache, HAProxy, Traefik, or others. Below you will find some sample configurations for HAProxy, naturally these configs may not suit all environments and you will likely need to adjust them to fit your needs.
The below examples are more or less acting as an "SSL termination" proxy, meaning that HAProxy is only accepting the requests on SSL and proxying to other backend services such as Strapi or other web servers. HAProxy cannot serve static content and as such it is usually used to handle multi-server deployments in a failover or load-balance situation. The examples provided below are based around everything existing on the same server, but could easily be tweaked for multi-server deployments.
As mentioned previously the following examples are either proxying all requests directly to Strapi or are splitting requests between Strapi and some other backend web server such as Nginx, Apache, or others.
Below are 3 example HAProxy configurations:
Sub-domain based such as api.example.com
Sub-folder based with both the API and Admin on the same sub-folder such as example.com/api and example.com/api/admin
Sub-folder based with split API and Admin such as example.com/api and example.com/dashboard
This config is using the sub-domain that is dedicated to Strapi only. It will redirect normal HTTP traffic over to SSL and proxies all requests (both api and admin) to the Strapi server running on the server.
This config is using a sub-folder that is dedicated to Strapi only. It will redirect normal HTTP traffic over to SSL and proxies the "frontend" to localhost:8080, but proxies all Strapi requests on the example.com/api sub-path to the locally running Strapi application.
✋ CAUTION
HAProxy cannot serve static content, the below example is proxying frontend traffic to some other web server running on the localhost port 8080
Example Domain: example.com/api
Path —/etc/haproxy/haproxy.cfg
global
log /dev/log local0
log /dev/log local1 notice
chroot /var/lib/haproxy
stats socket /run/haproxy/admin.sock mode 660 level admin expose-fd listeners
stats timeout 30s
user haproxy
group haproxy
daemon
# Default SSL material locations
ca-base /etc/ssl/certs
crt-base /etc/ssl/private
# See: https://ssl-config.mozilla.org/#server=haproxy&server-version=2.0.3&config=intermediate
ssl-default-bind-ciphers ECDHE-ECDSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:ECDHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES256-GCM-SHA3$
ssl-default-bind-ciphersuites TLS_AES_128_GCM_SHA256:TLS_AES_256_GCM_SHA384:TLS_CHACHA20_POLY1305_SHA256
ssl-default-bind-options ssl-min-ver TLSv1.2 no-tls-tickets
defaults
log global
mode http
option httplog
option dontlognull
timeout connect 5000
timeout client 50000
timeout server 50000
errorfile 400 /etc/haproxy/errors/400.http
errorfile 403 /etc/haproxy/errors/403.http
errorfile 408 /etc/haproxy/errors/408.http
errorfile 500 /etc/haproxy/errors/500.http
errorfile 502 /etc/haproxy/errors/502.http
errorfile 503 /etc/haproxy/errors/503.http
errorfile 504 /etc/haproxy/errors/504.http
# Everything above this line is HAProxy defaults
frontend example.com
bind *:80
bind *:443 ssl crt /path/to/your/cert
http-request redirect scheme https unless { ssl_fc }
acl api path_beg /api
use_backend strapi-backend if api
default_backend default-backend
backend default-backend
# HAProxy -cannot- serve static content on it's own
# This example is relaying traffic to some other backend webserver
server somewebserver 127.0.0.1:8080
backend strapi-backend
http-request set-path "%[path,regsub(^/api/?,/)]"
server local 127.0.0.1:1337
This config is using a sub-folder that is dedicated to Strapi only. It will redirect normal HTTP traffic over to SSL and proxies the "frontend" to localhost:8080, but proxies all strapi api requests on the example.com/api sub-path to the locally running Strapi application. Likewise it will proxy all admin requests on the example.com/dashboard sub-path.
✋ CAUTION
Please note that this config is not focused on the frontend hosting, you will most likely need to adjust this to your frontend software requirements, it is only being shown here as an example.
Example API Domain: example.com/api
Example Admin Domain: example.com/dashboard
Path —/etc/haproxy/haproxy.cfg
global
log /dev/log local0
log /dev/log local1 notice
chroot /var/lib/haproxy
stats socket /run/haproxy/admin.sock mode 660 level admin expose-fd listeners
stats timeout 30s
user haproxy
group haproxy
daemon
# Default SSL material locations
ca-base /etc/ssl/certs
crt-base /etc/ssl/private
# See: https://ssl-config.mozilla.org/#server=haproxy&server-version=2.0.3&config=intermediate
ssl-default-bind-ciphers ECDHE-ECDSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:ECDHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES256-GCM-SHA3$
ssl-default-bind-ciphersuites TLS_AES_128_GCM_SHA256:TLS_AES_256_GCM_SHA384:TLS_CHACHA20_POLY1305_SHA256
ssl-default-bind-options ssl-min-ver TLSv1.2 no-tls-tickets
defaults
log global
mode http
option httplog
option dontlognull
timeout connect 5000
timeout client 50000
timeout server 50000
errorfile 400 /etc/haproxy/errors/400.http
errorfile 403 /etc/haproxy/errors/403.http
errorfile 408 /etc/haproxy/errors/408.http
errorfile 500 /etc/haproxy/errors/500.http
errorfile 502 /etc/haproxy/errors/502.http
errorfile 503 /etc/haproxy/errors/503.http
errorfile 504 /etc/haproxy/errors/504.http
# Everything above this line is HAProxy defaults
frontend example.com
bind *:80
bind *:443 ssl crt /path/to/your/cert
http-request redirect scheme https unless { ssl_fc }
acl api path_beg /api
acl dashboard path_beg /dashboard
use_backend strapi-api-backend if api
use_backend strapi-dashboard-backend if dashboard
default_backend default-backend
backend default-backend
# HAProxy -cannot- serve static content on it's own
# This example is relaying traffic to some other backend webserver
server somewebserver 127.0.0.1:8080
backend strapi-api-backend
http-request set-path "%[path,regsub(^/api/?,/)]"
server local 127.0.0.1:1337
backend strapi-dashboard-backend
server local 127.0.0.1:1337
In order to take full advantage of a proxied Strapi application you will need to configure Strapi to make it aware of the upstream proxy. Like with the above HAProxy configurations there are 3 matching examples. To read more about this server configuration file please see the server configuration documentation.
