shared ssl cert and url rewritting

Hello,

My client does not want to purchase a ssl cert, rather they want to use their host's (westhost.com) shared ssl cert. To access the site through shared ssl under their setup you have to use the url:

https://ssl4.westhost.com/yourdomain.com/path/to/controller

As you can see, these makes havoc rain down on the url.

But, I googled around and came up with a good solution I thought, that is something similar to a subdomain redirect:

(my code is below)

I modified the above code to give me a nice url when I need ssl. And it works, except it goes into an endless redirection loop.

I think the problem is that not only is the domain changing, but also the base of the url which must really screw rails up.

So, is there a way to do something like this or do I just need to lay down the law with the client and buy an ssl cert?

Thank You, kyle

code from application.rb

#rewrite the url to redirect to the westhost ssl server when needed #see config/environment.rb to set which controllers need ssl def url_for(options = {}, *parameters_for_method_reference)       tmp_result = super((options.is_a?(Hash) ? options.merge({:only_path => false}) : options), parameters_for_method_reference)       if not (tmp_result =~ Regexp.new(request.host)).nil?          url_to_go = dispatch_ssl(tmp_result)       end

      super((url_to_go.nil? ? tmp_result : url_to_go), parameters_for_method_reference) end

NOTE: SECURE_DOMAIN is set in environment.rb to be: ssl4.westhost.com/mydomain.com/

#called by url_for, thus makes the proper ssl domain def dispatch_ssl(tmp_result = request.request_uri)       domain = SECURE_DOMAIN.blank? ? "" : SECURE_DOMAIN + "."       # need secure is a function that simply check if this path need to be put under SSL       if need_secure?(tmp_result)         if request.protocol == 'http://'           url_to_go = "https://#{domain}" + tmp_result         end       else         if request.protocol == 'https://'           host = request.host.gsub(Regexp.new(subdomain),"")           url_to_go = 'http://' + host + tmp_result         end       end       return url_to_go end

  #used by dispatch_ssl, checks the config/environments.rb set SECURE_MODE   #to see if the uri really does need ssl or not   def need_secure?(uri)       SECURE_MODE.each{ |s|         a = (uri =~ s)         return true unless a.nil?       }       return false;   end

  #we put this magic into a before_filter of a controller   #which will check if they need ssl and aren't using it   #and then send them marily on their way to ssl bliss.   #we hope!   def ssl_required       if not (redir = dispatch_ssl.to_s).blank?         redirect_to(redir) and return false       end   end