Rule Matching

In Membrane Service Proxy, rule matching is the process of selecting a rule that will handle an incoming HTTP request.

The list of rules is defined in Membrane's configuration file, proxies.xml, as a list of,

serviceProxys or soapProxys, or any combination of them. A rule typically defines a list of transformations (interceptors), which are to be applied to the request, as well as a target (host and/or port), where the request is to be forwarded to.

For an incoming HTTP request, the first proxy, serviceProxy or soapProxy matching the request will be selected. Whether a proxy is selected, is defined by its filter criteria. The filter criteria are a subset of

incoming TCP port
local IP address
hostname (the HTTP request's Host header)
request path (matched by a path prefix or a Java regular expression)

The first rule matching the request is selected.

Standalone Deployment

For example, if proxies.xml looks like:

Rule Matching 1

Figure1: Rule Matching: Standalone Deployment

Rule Matching 2

Figure2: Rule Matching: J2EE Deployment