S3 website distributed by CloudFront does not redirect subdir/ to subdir/index.html

[jmcgeheeiv]

Description

I took advantage of the new website_enabled feature to create a S3 website distributed by CloudFront.

I can access the contact/index.html page directly from the S3 website without "index.html":

http://namespace-environment-name-attribute.s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.com/contact/

This S3 bucket is distributed by CloudFront at stage.example.com. Here, the page works only when I specify "index.html":

https://stage.example.com/contact/                     403 error--access denied
https://stage.example.com/contact/index.html     works

My main motivation in using the S3 website was to get the index.html redirection, and avoid the Lambda@Edge redirection approach.

Expected Behavior

I want CloudFront to forward the request for https://stage.example.com/contact/ to the S3 website, which would respond with https://stage.example.com/contact/index.html. This is in fact possible. I have demonstrated it with another Terraform configuration.

Do you know how to get this to work? AWS did not know. I ask you because this module suggests that you have experience with using an S3 website as a CloudFront origin.

References

I am using my enhanced version of this module as described in PR #105. I believe that the redirection described here is orthogonal to PR #105 because:

• An S3 website is a custom origin, which is supported as-is in version 0.35.0
• The problem manifests whether or not the S3 website is public

Steps to Reproduce

This issue is really asking you to recall your past experience--"When you used an S3 website origin with CloudFront, how did you get this to work?" Still, here are the steps to reproduce the behavior:

1. Create the resources with module terraform-aws-cloudfront-s3-cdn
2. Upload to the S3 origin file contact/index.html
3. Access https://stage.example.com/contact/
4. Get 403 error, access denied

Screenshots

If applicable, add screenshots or logs to help explain your problem.

Environment (please complete the following information):

Anything that will help us triage the bug will help. Here are some ideas:

• Version 0.35.0

[jmcgeheeiv]

The URL that clients use to access the website must be specified using variable alias. I am inclined to recommend that alias be changed to a required variable.

[jmcgeheeiv]

The solution to this problem is implemented in #105.