Port Unification with Netty in Proxy Mode

Serving requests - both HTTP and HTTPS on the same port had been a requirement in my scenario.This is called port unification.  I was using Netty to serve requests. One of the standard ways to handle the scenario is to use the approach described in PortUnificationHandler.

However, in my case, the Netty implementation was mimicking the behaviour of a proxy server. This means that a client will make a CONNECT request before any actual data request is sent. CONNECT request is always non-SSL - even if the protocol to follow is HTTPS.

The approach to use in this scenario is as follows:

Implement a ChannelInboundByteHandlerAdapter;  on inbound buffer update - check if the request is CONNECT request. In case of CONNECT request, pass on the incoming bytes to the next handler in the chain.

If its not a CONNECT request, do the SSL data encryption check and add the SSL handler to the chain if necessary. Before passing on the bytes to the next handler, the unification handler should remove itself from the chain.