Guide to generate free SSL certificates

This is a simple guide whith examples to generate free SSL certificates in ubuntu with node.js and letsencrypt

Install cerbot

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:certbot/certbot
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install certbot

Note: To generate the certificates for the specified domain you must have port 80 free.

Generate certificates

certbot certonly --auto

Note: For certificates to be generated automatically; dns should point to the server where our application will run

In this route the certificates will be generated /etc/letsencrypt/live/

Usage Examples

Example #1

import https from "https";
import express from "express";
import fs from "fs;

const app = express();
const privateKey = fs.readFileSync(
  path.resolve(__dirname, "../certificates/ssl/privkey1.pem")
);
const certificate = fs.readFileSync(
  path.resolve(__dirname, "../certificates/ssl/fullchain1.pem")
);
const ca = fs.readFileSync(
  path.resolve(__dirname, "../certificates/ssl/chain1.pem")
);

const credentials = { key: privateKey, cert: certificate, ca: ca };
const httpsServer = https.createServer(credentials, app);
httpsServer.listen(443);

Example #2

Rename the generated files cert1.pem and privkey.pem to cert1.crt and privkey.key respectively.

import https from "https";
import express from "express";
import fs from "fs;

const app = express();
const certificate = fs.readFileSync('../certificates/ssl/cert1.crt', 'utf8');
const privateKey = fs.readFileSync('../certificates/ssl/privkey.key', 'utf8');
const credentials = { key: privateKey, cert: certificate };
const httpsServer = https.createServer(credentials, app);

httpsServer.listen(443);