On the OpenShift website here: https://help.openshift.com/hc/en-us/articles/202535440-How-do-I-get-SSL-for-my-domains-, it states
You can always take advantage of our *.rhcloud.com wildcard certificate in order
to securely connect to any application via it's original, OpenShift-provided
hostname URL.
However, Node's HTTPS server requires a file path to a certificate and private key in order to use HTTPS:
var privateKey = fs.readFileSync('sslcert/server.key', 'utf8');
var certificate = fs.readFileSync('sslcert/server.crt', 'utf8');
var credentials = {key: privateKey, cert: certificate};
var express = require('express');
var app = express();
var httpsServer = https.createServer(credentials, app);
httpsServer.listen(443);
None of the OpenShift environment variables (https://www.openshift.com/developers/openshift-environment-variables) appear to be related to SSL certificates, and the documentation does not mention it other than at the above link, which provides no technical information in actually using it.
How do I access the privateKey and certificate file on an OpenShift Node.js gear/cartridge?
It turns out that all SSL certificates are handled by OpenShift routers before they reach the gear/cartridge. There is no need to setup an HttpsServer at all, the normal HttpServer listening on port 8080 will receive both HTTP and HTTPS traffic transparently.
This is true whether you are using a custom certificate or the wildcard certificate, which is pretty nifty.
@user548084 You're saying I don't have to use the https server in OpenShift. Can I simply redirect all requests to http://... to https:// ? Would this be sufficient?