URLs

The secure web server is transparent. The HTTP headers are all there, and with the exception of the port number they're exactly the same as those provided by the traditional web server. Essentially, this means that anything which runs behind the standard web server will also run behind the secure server.

However, it's up to you, the developer, to ensure that URLs generated by your scripts are correct. If a site is being served securely, URLs pointing to that site must start with "https:" instead of "http:".

Since the secure server really is transparent, we added a single flag variable, "flSecure," to the page table. This makes it easy for your scripts to decide if they should build URLs with "http:" or "https:".

For example:

local ( url = "" )
 
if ( defined( pta^.flSecure ) and ( pta^.flSecure == true ) )
    url = "https://"
else
    url = "http://"
url = url + pta^.host + "/path/to/something"

If the secure server is running on a port other than the standard one (443 for HTTPS), you'll need to add that to the URL too, but the same is true for the traditional web server. For more information on this issue, see RFC: Port Forwarding Tool (from Eric Soroos).