URL Mapping for Services

When a tenant hosts a service to be used by external parties, it should ideally have a short URL. Shorter URLs are easier to be memorized and typed, which eliminates the need to log-in to access the service. Also, tenant information and other descriptive attributes are hidden in shorter URLs, and they are more convenient in hard-copy productions.

Context mapping capability for services (Axis2, Jar, Spring, Data Services etc.) facilitates this requirement.

By default, a service's endpoint URL is of the format http://localhost:port/services/service_context and service endpoint of a tenant is of the format http://localhost:port/services/t/tenant_domain/service_context . The URL mapping feature provides a way to access your hosted service endpoint with a shorter URL such as http://serviceid.localhost:port in standalone products. For example, if the actual URL of a service endpoint is https://localhost:9443/services/admin/RESTSample, with a URL mapping name as servicetest, you get a shorter endpoint URL as https://servicetest.localhost:9443.

The steps below explain how to use URL mapping.

1. Log in to the management console and select Services > List under the Main menu.  
2. From the Deployed Services page that appears, click a service to which you want to map the end point URL. 
   
3. The service's dashboard opens. It contains a link for URL Mapping. Click it.
   
4. In the URL Mappings page that opens, click Add New Mapping link and enter a URL mapping name.
5. The added URL mapping appears in the URL Mapping page. For example,
   
   Here the suffix localhost comes from <PRODUCT_HOME>/repository/conf/etc/url-mapping-config.xml. By default, the suffix is localhost and the  URL mappings limit is 1.  You can configure your own suffix and limit per service in the mentioned configuration file.   
6. With this shortened endpoint URL, you can access the service's WSDL files, tryit tool and rest calls as follows:
   
   • http://examplemap.localhost:port?wsdl - to access the wsdl of your service
   •   http://examplemap.localhost:port?tryit - to access the tryit tool of your service
   • http://examplemap.localhost:port /getQuote - to access rest call of your service
    
7. You need a cname to access your own domain. If a cname is not available at the moment, you can use /etc/hosts file in ubuntu or Windows\Syst em32\drivers\et c\hosts file in windows to put your domain entries pointing to the local ip. For example,

   127.0.0.1 exampleapp.localhost
   
   This is applicable only for testing purposes.