How do you incorporate SSL for secure local development with InstantRails?

Question

I'm using InstantRails (on Vista), and I'm at the stage where I'm looking to integrate a Rails app with PayPal (recurring billing via web payments standard - no ActiveMerchant needed). What is the best step-by-step process for enabling HTTPS for my local development/testing purposes?

I'm using the default Mongrel/Apache setup that comes with InstantRails.

Thanks in advance for any help.

Answer 1

Use openSSL to generate a private key and self-signed certificate.

Good instructions here: http://www.akadia.com/services/ssh_test_certificate.html

OpenSSL HOWTO: http://www.openssl.org/docs/HOWTO/certificates.txt

Answer 2

There is a plugin for rails also called ssl_requirement which you can use to very easily tell the application which actions will need to be done over ssl. It's pretty handy, I think DHH wrote it.