Inbound HTTP component

The Inbound HTTP component is able to receive messages through HTTP requests. It will act like a webservice that listens for HTTP requests. Once a message is received, it's content will be handed to the next component in the flow.

Configuration

The Inbound HTTP component has the following configuration options:

Endpoint

A URL to identify this component's endpoint.

Remarks

• The Endpoint name can only contain letters, numbers and these special characters: @, ., _, +, ~, ?.
• The Endpoint name should contain between 3 and 50 characters.

Protocol

Select which protocol will be used to by the web service.

Options

• http
• https (default)

Tenant part

Select which part of the tenant is used in the URL.

Options

• Tenant ID (default)
• Tenant name

Match prefix?

Whether you want use the URL of the endpoint as a prefix. See Reaching the webservice with wildcards for more info.

Options

• Yes
• No (default)

Preserve HTTP headers

Whether you want to keep the Camel HTTP headers on the exchange instead of removing them from the exchange.

Options

• Yes
• No (default)

Exchange pattern

This option determines how the component handles the incoming messages. By default Request reply is selected. This means that the component will reply to an incoming message with the result of the flow for that incoming message.

When you don't need the result of the flow for the message you sent, then you can select One way as exchange pattern. When the component receives your message it will respond with status 200 OK and with the body you sent.

See Behavior of the component for more information.

Options

• One way
• Request reply (default)

Remarks

• For Request reply the timeout option of the flow may need to be increased when the flow takes some time to process the incoming messages.
• The response to the caller will be the existing Exchange body before reaching the first One way component in the flow.
• When there is an Outbound flow link component somewhere in the flow you should be cautious with selecting Request reply when the Outbound flow link has One way selected for its exchange pattern option. There could be some timeouts because the Inbound HTTP component will keep waiting till it receives the processed message to sent back to the caller.

Reaching the webservice

HTTP

An Inbound HTTP with the following settings:

• Endpoint named `dovetail_test`,
• Protocol set to `http`,
• Tenant part set to `Tenant ID`

Will have a webservice URL that looks like this (when the tentant id is 123456):

http://[host name]:[port]/123456/dovetail_test

The port is 8000 for Test and 9000 for Production.

HTTPS

An Inbound HTTP with the following settings:

• Endpoint named `dovetail_test`
• Protocol set to `https`
• Tenant part set to `Tenant name`

Will have a webservice URL that looks like this (when the tenant is dovetail):

https://[host name]/inbound_http/test/dovetail/dovetail_test

Remark

The old format of the HTTPS URL's is still supported, but just now shown in the UI. The URL above will look like this in the old format:

https://[host name]:[port]/dovetail/dovetail_test

The port is 8001 for Test and 9001 for Production.

Reaching the webservice with wildcards

By default the webservice will only match the exact URL that is specified in the Endpoint property. In the examples above it is only possible to reach the webservice by sending messages to the exact /dovetail/dovetail_test URL.

If you also want to reach the same webservice with dovetail/dovetail_test/user you can set the Match prefix? property to Yes. This way /dovetail/dovetail_test is the prefix for your webservice and it can be reached with messages that use different URL's.

You can get the URL of the exchange using the header called CamelHttpUri. Which is available on the exchange when the Preserve HTTP Headers option is set to Yes.

Testing the webservice

You can use a REST client, such as Postman, to send messages to the Inbound HTTP component in Dovetail. This makes it possible to manually send test data to the flow.

To send messages you wil need to:

1. Enter the URL of the webservice as described above.
2. Set the dropdown to POST
3. Choose message format RAW
4. Paste a message body (e.g. XML data) in the text area field.
5. Click Send to submit the message

You can verify wether the message was processed succesfully by Dovetail in the Flow Manager: Flow details.

Behavior of the component

The Inbound HTTP Component will by default always send back the result of the flow, even when the flow is asynchronous. This is determined by the exchange pattern which is Request reply by default. In the following diagram it is explained visually:

In some cases this is not desired, depending on the size and complexity of the flow it can take some time until the Inbound HTTP Component gets back a result from the flow. Some clients like Postman wait till they get a response, but other clients or applications don't wait long enough and get a timeout.

If you always want to get back a response immediately you can set the exchange pattern to One way. The response will be of status 200 OK and the the body that was sent will also be sent back.

Remarks

• An Inbound HTTP component should always be the first component in the flow.
• The maximum size of a message body that can be uploaded is 10 MB.
• You can send a header to a flow with an InboundHttp component by adding it as a parameter:
  • append ?name=value to the url to send a header with headername name and headervalue value to that flow. i.e. https://[instance].dovetail.world/[environment]/[tenant]/[flow]?name=value.
  • send multiple headers by adding an & in between ?name1=value1&name2=value2.