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getting public ssl certificate for node.js server

I am running a node.js express server on my aws ac2 linux instance. I need to expose it through https to work properly with the react app that pulls data from it. I was able to generate my own ssl certificate but it will not be recognized by other users and the client app will through an error.
Could you please explain how can i get a public ssl certificate just for the node server. The server uses an ip address like xxx.xx.xx.xx:4500/endpoint. Aws seems to offer ssl but only if you pay for its load balancer and I do not want to do that.
Is there a way to verify the certificate that i generated with openssl so i can use it publicly?
Here is my basic setup:
const express = require('express');
const cors = require('cors');
const mysql = require('mysql');
const moment = require('moment');
var fs = require('fs');
const https = require('https')
const app = express();
xxx
https.createServer({key: fs.readFileSync('server.key'),
cert: fs.readFileSync('server.cert')}, app).listen(4500, () => {
console.log('Listening...')
})
Thank you in advance!

OpenSSL itself is a tool to create self-signed certificates. Those certificates are never trusted by the browser.
Instead, you can use Let's Encrypt with this command:
apt install certbot
certbot certonly --standalone -d example.com
Let's Encrypt is a trusted entity, so their certificates are valid.
Your new certificates will be on a path like this:
/etc/letsencrypt/live/example.com
As others suggested, you will need one domain. You can get one free on sites like Freenom.

Your self-signed certificate won't be trusted by the browser.
One solution would be to get yourself a domain and then a free SSL certificate issued by Let's Encrypt. This would remove the error because Let's Encrypt certificates are trusted by all major browsers.
Another solution is to get the free plan of Cloudflare, which includes an SSL certificate. More info here.
There is the possibility to secure your IP with an SSL certificate but there are no free solutions for this.

If you in a region where Amazon Certificate Manager is suported, You can get a SSL certificate for free.
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/acm/latest/userguide/gs-acm-request-public.html
In order to apply ssl certificate, The easiest way is to use it on a load balancer. Check my answer to this question Apollo Server on Ubuntu 18.04 EC2 instance with HTTPS.
If you want to use the certificate directly on EC2. try the following. I haven't tried this myself.
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/acm/latest/userguide/gs-acm-export-private.html
Also i have seen people using https://letsencrypt.org/ to get certs.

how to access automatically access https protocols on express with nginx [duplicate]

This question already has an answer here:
How to force node.js/express.js to HTTPS when it is running behind an AWS load balancer
(1 answer)
Closed 5 years ago.
I have running server nodeJs with express module. And website is made by React.js which is server-side-redering.
And I have domain : www.example.com, Route53 with load balancer applied AWS Certificate Manager.
the problem is I don't know how to automatically access https:// protocol, when I type url http://www.example.com
now, I can access each of url like as http://www.example.com or https://www.example.com
I found solution :
app.use (function (enter code herereq, res, next) {
if (req.secure) {
next();
} else {
res.redirect('https://' + req.headers.host + req.url);
}
});
but it's not working...
what is nice way???
update
if using nodejs with express, how to set a port?
the express block port 80, So I use
sudo iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -p tcp --dport 80 -j REDIRECT --to-ports 3000. is it common method to connect port?
I have load balancer using SSL (ACM), and port using port are 80, 443.
how to directly access that either 'http' or 'https should access https.

When deploying NodeJS applications it is recommended to use a web server like Nginx or Apache infront of Node server as a proxy, for gzip encoding, static file serving, HTTP caching, SSL handling, load balancing and etc.
One option is to have the redirection at proxy level
In AWS another option is to use Cloudfront with http to https redirect for behavior of the origin (Also caching static content at Edge Location level)

Unable to connect from a different network express.js

I'm experimenting with node.js and express.js.
When I try to connect to my web server from any computer in my network, it works, but then when I try to connect from outside network the connection times out.
var app = require('express')();
var http = require('http').Server(app);
app.get('/', function(req, res) {
res.send("Hello World");
});
http.listen(3000, '0.0.0.0', function() {
console.log("Listening on port 3000!");
});

I just tested your code and I'm able to access the server from outside my local network by navigating to:
http://173.0.[my].[ip]:3000
So the code is correct. It could be that you need to open the port 3000 to the outside world. Here's how it can be accomplished.
Through your router admin interface
Here's mine for example:
Where 192.168.1.130 is the local IP of the PC I'm running the http server on.
Don't forget to click the Save settings button in that interface to apply the changes.
Using a tool like ngrok (mentioned by eddiezane)
Install ngrok through their website or without leaving the command prompt, with the ngrok node wrapper.
npm install ngrok -g
Start your http server and then run:
ngrok http 3000
Navigate to one of the url in front of Forwarding:
The free version is more for a quick test and less as a definitive way to expose a service in a production environnement since every time you restart ngrok, a new user-hostile url is given to you.
Other possible problems
It could also be that you need to add an exception to the firewall (if on windows).

To add to Emile's answer, I would check out ngrok which is an awesome tool that generates you a publicly accessible URL for a port on your local machine.
Here's a good blog post on it my buddy wrote.

Cross domain issue for Express js and Angular Js

I have a node.js rest api built with Express framework version 4.11.1 and hosted in a server 'abc.com:5142'. Also have a front end website built with cg-angular which is hosted on the same domain but a different port 'abc.com:7070'.
When I access the front end causes a cross domain issue. I have tried almost all solutions including cors npm package. But it is not working.
Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks

Try this (keep the order):
var expr = require('express');
var app = expr.express();
var cors = require('cors');
app.use(cors());

Point domain to node express server on Azure

This must be an extremely common problem. I've seen various answers for this but none seem to work for me.
I have node installed on an apache server on Windows Azure. My app is built and ready to go (snippet below):
var express = require("express");
var app = express();
//example api call
app.get("/api/example", function(req, res){
//do some process
res.send(data);
});
app.listen(8080);
console.log("App listening on port 8080");
Now, when testing on my own computer, I could then go to localhost:8080, which works great. But now I've put it on the azure server I can't get an external domain to point to it properly. So for example, I have the domain:
framework.example.com
I've added this to my hosts file in Azure:
XXX.0.0.01 framework.example.com
Initially I tried also editing the http-vhosts.conf to point the domain to the correct directory. This worked for loading the frontend, but the app couldn't talk to the backend. API calls returned 400 not found errors.
I've also tried an Express vhost method but think I'm doing it wrong and don't fully understand it. What is the correct method?!
My app structure is like this:
- package.json
- server.js
- server
- files used by server.js
- public
- all frontend files
So to boot the server I run server.js which runs the code at the top. The server.js uses the below Express config to point to the public folder.
app.use(express.static(__dirname + "/public"));

Adding it to the hosts file in Azure won't help. You'll need to configure your domain's DNS to point to Azure. I'd recommend using the DNS Name of your Cloud Service instance. Your underlying VM IP address could change if you need to stop it for some reason, but your Cloud Service DNS name is configured to always route to your underlying VMs. That means you'll need to setup a CNAME with your DNS.
Read more about that here: Cloud Services Custom Domain Name
Next, you'll either need to host the node app on port 80, or put a proxy in front of it to handle that for you. Otherwise you'll be stuck typing framework.example.com:8080 which is not ideal. On linux, you'll likely need to be a privileged user to host on port 80, but you never want your node app to have root privileges. You can use authbind to work around this problem.
See an example of how to use it with node here: Using authbind with Node.js
All that being said, it seems like you're somewhat new with linux server management. If that's the case, I'd strongly recommend trying to use something like Azure Websites instead of a VM. You no longer have to manage the virtual machine OS. You simply tell it to host your application and it takes care of the rest. If you're using github, this is incredibly easy to test and iterate with. It does host on Windows under the hood, and that might problems for some applications, but I host all my node sites there (developed on Mac) without any issues.