Manual Chapter :
About the HTTP Connector
Applies To:
Show Versions
BIG-IP APM
- 16.0.1, 16.0.0
About the HTTP Connector
Use the HTTP Connector to post an HTTP request to an external HTTP server.
This enables APM to make HTTP calls from a per-request policy without the need for an iRule, for
example. The typical use for an HTTP Connector is to provide access to an external API or
service. For example, you can use HTTP Connector to check a server against an external blocklist,
or an external reputation engine, and then use the results in an Access Policy Manager
per-request policy.
The HTTP Connector request allows for configuration flexibility with the following options.
- Security / SSL options for the request
- Choice of DNS Resolver objects
- Choice of serverSSL profile
- Transformation of HTTP response body into subsession variables in JSON format, or in plain text format
- Encoding options for input and output data (see the online help for examples)
- HTTP Basic, Token, or custom authentication types
- Encryption of secret tokens and passwords used for HTTP calls
HTTP Connector is implemented in a per-request policy.
Configure the following elements to define an HTTP Connector workflow.
- An HTTP Transport item, to provide the connection details, including the DNS server and connection limits.
- An HTTP Connector Request item, to define the items and queries that will be sent to the HTTP server, and how to handle the response.
- An HTTP Connector per-request policy agent, defined in a per-request policy subroutine. The HTTP Connector per-request policy item provides access to the HTTP Connector from a specific point in the per-request policy, and provides branching logic based on the results. Multiple HTTP Connector per-request policy items can be specified, even to the same HTTP Connector Request item, for handling multiple results within the per-request policy flow.
