Selecting and Calling the HTTP Request Handler (HTTP Extension)
The ICF controller now uses the URL to identify the virtual host and the HTTP request handler maintained in transaction SICF (see
Creating a Service). For this to be possible, the URL has to be parsed.The parsing procedure involves the use of URL prefixes (a URL prefix is a sub-path within the path specified in the URL).
If the URL is
http://hostname:port/bc/ping, the system first checks whether hostname:port is defined as a Virtual Host. If it is not defined as a port, the virtual host default_host is used. The system then looks in the corresponding service tree in SICF for the service /bc/ping, and the relevant HTTP request handler is called.Therefore, a HTTP request handler is always defined by a sub-path within the path specified by the URL (also known as URL prefix). Also, a single URL prefix can define more than one HTTP request handler.
The path components are processed from left to right in order to find the corresponding ICF services.
Since any number of HTTP request handlers can be set for a service, *** For details of this, see
Next comes
Processing the Request Using the HTTP Extension (7)