HTTPS issue node server MERN stack - node.js

Question

I have been frantically trying for hours to get my email working.
This is the website:https://www.shafirpl.com/contact
I have a react app hosted on the same server ( a digital ocean droplet) as node.js app. The domain name(shafirpl.com) has SSL certificate from cloudflare. The node.js app is running on port 4000 while the react app on port 80. So what is happening now is that the react production build is running on port 80 of that IP address/server, and I have an axios post request when the user clicks the send button. When it was on my local machine it worked as the axios request was using "http://localhost:4000/email". But when I deployed on the server and changed the URL to "http://myServerIpAddress:4000/email" I get the error that says I have to send the request via https. I am not sure how to generate an SSL certificate so that my front end react app can commit the axios request and don't have the issue. I have tried to follow certbot tutorial but it seems like certbot requires a specific domain name. SO what I did is that I created key-cert pairs for my domain name (shafirpl.com) using this tutorial (https://dev.to/omergulen/step-by-step-node-express-ssl-certificate-run-https-server-from-scratch-in-5-steps-5b87) and am using in my server.js file (the node.js app brain) like this:
const express = require("express");
// const connectDB = require("./config/db");
const path = require("path");
const https = require("https");
const fs = require("fs");
// routes variables
const emailRoute = require("./routes/email");
const resumeRoute = require("./routes/resume");
// const authRoute = require("./routes/api/auth");
const app = express();
var cors = require("cors");
// var corsOptions = {
// origin: "*",
// optionsSuccessStatus: 200, // some legacy browsers (IE11, various SmartTVs) choke on 204
// };
app.use(cors());
app.options("*", cors());
// Connect Database
// connectDB();
// Middleware initialization
/*
* Usually we used to install body parser and do
* app.use(bodyparser.json()). But now bodyparser comes
* packaged with express. So we just have to do express.json()
* to use bodyparser
*/
app.use(express.json({ extended: false }));
// use this when on my pc
// app.use(function (req, res, next) {
// res.header("Access-Control-Allow-Origin", "http://localhost:3000"); // update to match the domain you will make the request from
// res.header(
// "Access-Control-Allow-Headers",
// "Origin, X-Requested-With, Content-Type, Accept"
// );
// next();
// });
// use this on produnction
// app.use(function (req, res, next) {
// res.header("Access-Control-Allow-Origin", "*"); // update to match the domain you will make the request from
// res.header(
// "Access-Control-Allow-Headers",
// "Origin, X-Requested-With, Content-Type, Accept"
// );
// next();
// });
// app.get("/", (req,res) => {res.send('API Running')});
// Define Routes
app.get("/", (req, res) => {
res.send("Server Running");
});
app.use("/email", emailRoute);
app.use("/resume", resumeRoute);
// app.use("/api/auth", authRoute);
// app.use("/api/profile", profileRoute);
// app.use("/api/posts", postsRoute);
// // serve static assets in production
// if (process.env.NODE_ENV === "production") {
// // set static folder
// app.use(express.static("client/build"));
// app.get("*", (req, res) => {
// res.sendFile(path.resolve(__dirname, "client", "build", "index.html"));
// });
// }
/*
* This means when the app will be deployed to heroku, it will
* look for a port specified by heroku. But since right now
* locally we don't have that, we will be running the app on
* port 5000
*/
// const PORT = process.env.PORT || 4000;
// app.listen(PORT, () => {
// console.log(`Server started on port ${PORT}`);
// });
app.listen(4000);
// comment out this line when testing on localhost
const httpsServer = https.createServer(
{
key: fs.readFileSync("/etc/letsencrypt/live/shafirpl.com/privkey.pem"),
cert: fs.readFileSync("/etc/letsencrypt/live/shafirpl.com/fullchain.pem"),
},
app
);
httpsServer.listen(443, () => {
console.log("HTTPS Server running on port 443");
});
And in my axios.post I am using like this
const url = "https://shafirpl.com:443/email";
const sendMessage = async () => {
const config = {
headers: {
'Content-Type': 'application/json',
}
}
const body = JSON.stringify({ name, email, company, message });
try {
const res = await axios.post(url, body, config);
console.log(res);
clearForm();
showSuccessMessage();
} catch (error) {
console.log(error);
showFailureMessage();
}
}
const showFailureMessage = () => {
setFailureAlert(true);
setTimeout(() => {
setFailureAlert(false)
}, 3000);
}
But right now I am again getting this error:
Access to XMLHttpRequest at 'https://shafirpl.com/email' from origin 'https://www.shafirpl.com' has been blocked by CORS policy: Response to preflight request doesn't pass access control check: No 'Access-Control-Allow-Origin' header is present on the requested resource.
I actually don't know how to solve this as I am pretty new to the total MERN stack build. Can anyone help me with this? I just wanna send email using the axios

Answer 1

I had the same issue - what I did, I removed explicit ports from both server and client. Then I noticed that I was hitting http://mydomain.... please try accessing it from https://mydomain... that did the trick for me :) Hope it helps!

Answer 2

I think i fixed the issue. Instead of running 2 different application, I decided to serve my react build via my node.js app. The way I did was this:
const express = require("express");
// const connectDB = require("./config/db");
const path = require("path");
// routes variables
const emailRoute = require("./routes/email");
const resumeRoute = require("./routes/resume");
const app = express();
app.use(express.json({ extended: false }));
app.use("/api/email", emailRoute);
app.use("/api/resume", resumeRoute);
app.use(express.static("client/build"));
app.get("*", (req, res) => {
res.sendFile(path.resolve(__dirname, "client", "build", "index.html"));
});
app.listen(80);
Then on my axios request I just did that:
const url = "/api/email"; const sendMessage = async () => {
const config = {
headers: {
'Content-Type': 'application/json',
}
}
const body = JSON.stringify({ name, email, company, message });
try {
const res = await axios.post(url, body, config);
console.log(res);
clearForm();
showSuccessMessage();
} catch (error) {
console.log(error);
showFailureMessage();
}
}
Right now everything is working fine.
For the resume thing which sends a file download, instead of using /api/resume I had to do
something like this
<Nav.Link eventKey="6" activeClassName="active-nav" href="https://shafirpl.com/api/resume" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Resume</Nav.Link>
And right now the resume download is also working fine
Thanks for all the help