Short way to link to http from https (and vice versa) using relative links

Question

When I´m in a secure part of a web-site I´m developing (entering a specific page or folder using https), the relative links to the normal pages are automatically converted to https as well.

Is there a way to tell an <a> tag to always use the http protocol instead of the https protocol (or the other way around)?

I know it´s easy using the complete link (http://www.mysite.com/index.html or https://www.mysite.com/index.html), but I would like it to work with relative links (index.html, ../index.html, etc.).

Answer 1

It sounds like you want to use the BASE element.

There is no way to 'tell' an Anchor to use a specific protocol or not, at least without using the BASE element in the HEAD of that page.

Is there a reason why you want to use relative links over absolute links? This article talks about the pitfall of using relative links with HTTPS - the potential to have your site double indexed and such.

Answer 2

Not sure if this is exactly what you were looking for, but if you're using Apache, there's a trick you can use to do this: http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/ssl/ssl_faq.html#relative

Basically you put the following in your Apache configuration file:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^/(.*):SSL$ https://%{SERVER_NAME}/$1 [R,L]
RewriteRule ^/(.*):NOSSL$ http://%{SERVER_NAME}/$1 [R,L]

then append :SSL to any link (in the webpage) for which you want to force HTTPS, and :NOSSL to any link for which you want to force regular HTTP.

Answer 3

There is no way to do this with relative hyperlinks as your are using a different protocol, it would be no different than linking to a ftp location.

Answer 4

We use Apache mod_rewrite to control whether a page is served via http or https. Here's an example snippet from a site's root directory .htaccess file:

# Redirect most reqests for https to http
RewriteRule ^https://www.example.com(.*) http://www.example.com$1 [R=301,NC]

# Allow some URIs to be https if requested
RewriteCond   %{SERVER_PORT}  ^443$
RewriteCond   %{REQUEST_URI}  !^/images/(.*)$
RewriteCond   %{REQUEST_URI}  !^/scripts/(.*)$
RewriteCond   %{REQUEST_URI}  !^/styles/(.*)$
RewriteCond   %{REQUEST_URI}  !^/store(.*)$
RewriteCond   %{REQUEST_URI}  !^/login.htm$
RewriteRule ^(.*) http://www.example.com/$1 [L,R]

# Force some URIs to be https only
RewriteCond   %{SERVER_PORT}  ^80$
RewriteRule ^store(.*) https://www.example.com/store$1 [L,R]

RewriteCond   %{SERVER_PORT}  ^80$
RewriteRule ^FormSanityKey.htm https://www.example.com/login$1 [L,R]

Read all about it at:

http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.0/mod/mod_rewrite.html

Answer 5

You can make all your internal links be protocol independent by using the following syntax:

<a href="//some/local/file.php">link text</a>

instead of

<a href="some/local/file.php">link text</a>

the // will make the link respect whatever protocol the page was loaded over.