### Pre-condition

One day in your Laravel app, you were required to redirect all `http` requests to `https` but need to make a certain URL route accessible via `http` for a certain reason; perhaps a portion of your javascript code needs to redirect to `http` URL but it can't because redirection to secure URL to insecure is prohibited. Therefore, in cases like this, you need to just allow just one URL to make an `http` connection. 

NOTE: There are obvious security implications here so don't just follow this blindly and understand if this is really the solution you're looking for. The nginx config can somehow be improved, I just don't have the time yet. It sure do look redundant.

### Understanding and examples

- Redirect everything from `http` to `https`

`http://example.com/` -> `https://example.com`  
`http://example.com/login` -> `https://example.com/login`  
`https://example.com/login` -> `https://example.com/login`  

- But make an exception like below:

`http://example.com/except` -> `http://example.com/except`  
`https://example.com/except` -> `http://example.com/except`  

### Laravel Route (routes.php)

```php
Route::get('except/{target}', ['as' => 'except', 'uses' => 'MyController@getExcept']); // translate to http(s)://example.com/except/{blablabla}
```

### Nginx config

```
server {
    listen 80;
    server_name example.com;

    #access_log /var/log/example.com.access.log;
    error_log /var/log/example.com.error.log warn;

    root /srv/www/example.com/public;
    index index.php;

    # Redirect all http to https
    location / {
        return 301 https://example.com$request_uri;
    }

    # URL exception so anything that goes by the URL http://example.com/except/ will just work as it is
    location /except/ {
       try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$query_string;
    }

    location ~ \.php$ {
        fastcgi_split_path_info ^(.+\.php)(/.+)$;
        fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php5-fpm.sock;
        #fastcgi_pass   127.0.0.1:9000;
        fastcgi_index index.php;
        fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
        fastcgi_param SCRIPT_NAME     $fastcgi_script_name;
        include fastcgi_params;
    }
}

server {
    listen 443 ssl;

    # SSL via LetsEncrypt
    ssl_certificate /root/.acme.sh/example.com/fullchain.cer;
    ssl_certificate_key /root/.acme.sh/example.com/example.com.key;

    # Strengthening security
    ssl_session_cache shared:SSL:20m;
    ssl_session_timeout 60m;
    ssl_prefer_server_ciphers on;
    ssl_protocols TLSv1 TLSv1.1 TLSv1.2;
    ssl_ciphers 'ECDHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384:DHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:DHE-DSS-AES128-GCM-SHA256:kEDH+AESGCM:ECDHE-RSA-AES128-SHA256:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES128-SHA256:ECDHE-RSA-AES128-SHA:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES128-SHA:ECDHE-RSA-AES256-SHA384:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES256-SHA384:ECDHE-RSA-AES256-SHA:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES256-SHA:DHE-RSA-AES128-SHA256:DHE-RSA-AES128-SHA:DHE-DSS-AES128-SHA256:DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA256:DHE-DSS-AES256-SHA:DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA:AES128-GCM-SHA256:AES256-GCM-SHA384:AES128-SHA256:AES256-SHA256:AES128-SHA:AES256-SHA:AES:CAMELLIA:DES-CBC3-SHA:!aNULL:!eNULL:!EXPORT:!DES:!RC4:!MD5:!PSK:!aECDH:!EDH-DSS-DES-CBC3-SHA:!EDH-RSA-DES-CBC3-SHA:!KRB5-DES-CBC3-SHA';
    ssl_dhparam /etc/ssl/certs/dhparams.pem;

    server_name example.com;

    #access_log /var/log/example.com.access.log;
    error_log /var/log/example.com.error.log warn;

    root /srv/www/example.com/public;
    index index.php;

    # Just process requests normally
    location / {
        try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$query_string;
    }

    # Redirect https request of this exception URL to http
    location /except {
        return 301 http://example.com$request_uri;
    }

    location ~ \.php$ {
        fastcgi_split_path_info ^(.+\.php)(/.+)$;
        fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php5-fpm.sock;
        #fastcgi_pass   127.0.0.1:9000;
        fastcgi_index index.php;
        fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
        fastcgi_param SCRIPT_NAME     $fastcgi_script_name;
        include fastcgi_params;
    }
}
```