Processing Requests Using Partial Matching of URL Aliases

REST URL requests usually include the identifier for a particular resource. However, because the identifier varies for each instance of a resource, REST requests often do not exactly match any of the defined URL aliases for a particular resource. To enable you to define URL aliases for REST resources, Integration Server can use partial matching to process REST requests. A partial match occurs when a REST request includes only part of a URL alias. For more information about URL aliases, see webMethods Integration Server Administrator’s Guide.

When partial matching is enabled and Integration Server receives a REST request URL, an alias is considered a match if the entire alias matches all or part of the request URL, starting with the first character of the request URL's path.

For example, assume the following URL aliases are defined:

URL Alias	URL Path
a1	rest/purchasing/order
a2	rest/purchasing/invoice
a22	rest/purchasing/admin
a3	invoke/pub.flow/debugLog

When partial matching is enabled, the following request URLs would get different results:

A request URL of http://MyHost:5555/a1 matches URL alias a1 exactly. The resulting URL is http://MyHost:5555/rest/purchasing/order.

A request URL of http://MyHost:5555/a2/75909 matches alias a2 because the request URL's path begins with "a2". The trailing characters of the request URL are retained and the resulting URL is http://MyHost:5555/rest/purchasing/invoice/75909.

A request URL of http://MyHost:5555/a1/75909/customer/0122?terms=net7 matches alias a1 because the request URL's path begins with "a1". The trailing characters of the request URL are retained and the resulting URL is http://MyHost:5555/rest/purchasing/order/75909/customer/0122?terms=net7.

Note: In some cases, a partial match can result in an invalid request. For example, a request URL of http://host:5555/a3456 matches alias a3 because the request URL's path begins with "a3". The trailing characters of the request URL are retained and the resulting URL is http://host:5555/invoke/pub.flow/debugLog456. Since there is no pub.flow:debugLog456 service, this would be an invalid request.