ADC

HTTP callouts

For certain types of requests, or when certain criteria are met during policy evaluation, you might want to stall policy evaluation briefly, retrieve information from a server, and then perform a specific action that depends on the information that is retrieved. At other times, when you receive certain types of requests, you might want to update a database or the content hosted on a Web server. HTTP callouts enable you to perform all these tasks.

An HTTP callout is an HTTP or HTTPS request that the NetScaler appliance generates and sends to an external application when certain criteria are met during policy evaluation. The information that is retrieved from the server can be analyzed by Advanced policy expressions, and an appropriate action can be performed. You can configure HTTP callouts for HTTP content switching, TCP content switching, rewrite, responder, and for the token-based method of load balancing.

Before you configure an HTTP callout, you must set up an application on the server to which the callout will be sent. The application, which is called the HTTP callout agent , must be configured to respond to the HTTP callout request with the required information. The HTTP callout agent can also be a Web server that serves the data for which the NetScaler appliance sends the callout. You must make sure that the format of the response to an HTTP callout does not change from one invocation to another.

After you set up the HTTP callout agent, you configure the HTTP callout on the NetScaler appliance. Finally, to invoke the callout, you include the callout in a Advanced policy in the appropriate NetScaler feature and then bind the policy to the bind point at which you want the policy to be evaluated.

After you have configured the HTTP callout, you must verify the configuration to make sure that the callout is working correctly.

HTTP callouts

In this article