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Wait for HTTP Request

Activity

Waits for an incoming HTTP request in a process definition. The process instance suspends until the incoming HTTP request is received.

See Scalability With Incoming Events in TIBCO ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks Process Design Guide for information on running the "Wait for..." activities in a multi-engine mode.

Configuration

The Configuration tab has the following fields.

Field	Description
Name	The name to appear as the label for the activity in the process definition.
Description	Short description of the activity.
HTTP Connection	The HTTP Connection shared resource that describes the host name and the port number on which the process waits for the incoming message. See HTTP Connection for more information about specifying shared resources.
Parse Post Method Data	Specifies that the message body of the HTTP request should be parsed into a schema for the activity’s output. When this check box is selected, the parameters specified in the Parameters field are used to validate the incoming request and parse it into the output schema. Note: In the case of an incoming GET request, there is no message body, so this field has no effect on incoming GET requests.
Parameters	The parameters of the incoming HTTP request. Specifying parameters in this table allows the incoming request to be parsed and represented as a schema in this activity’s output. For each parameter, you must provide a name, datatype, and whether the field is required, optional, or repeating. Use the + and x buttons to the right of the parameter table to add and remove parameters. Use the up and down arrows to move parameters to new positions in the table. Note: Specifying parameters in this field parses the query string of the request into the output schema, regardless of whether the Parse Post Method Data field is checked. Checking the Parse Post Method Data field and specifying parameters here is required to parse the message body along with the query string of the request.
HTTP Authentication	Specifies that the client sending the HTTP request must be authenticated. The user name and password specified in the incoming request must exist in the domain. Users are created and managed in the domain using TIBCO Administrator.

Event

The Event tab has the following fields.

Field	Description
Candidate Event Key	Expression built from the data of the incoming file change event. This expression should evaluate to a string and it is compared to the "key" field of the activity’s input. If the Candidate Event Key and the activity’s key match, then the process accepts the incoming message. For example, you may have sent an HTTP request earlier in the process, and you may be waiting for a response from the HTTP server. You may specify a requestID as an attribute of the HTTP request and responseTo attribute on the Wait for HTTP request activity. The HTTP server presumably will set the responseTo attribute of its response to the same value as the requestID attribute of the request. You would then specify the responseTo attribute as the Candidate Event Key and the requestID attribute of the HTTP request as the "key" in the Input tab. This expression is specified in XPath, and only data from the incoming event is available for use in this XPath expression. See TIBCO ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks Process Design for more information about XPath expressions.
Event Timeout (msec)	A message may arrive before this activity is executed. This field specifies the amount of time (in milliseconds) a message waits if it is received before this activity is executed. If the event timeout expires, an error is logged and the event is discarded. If no value is specified in this field, the message waits indefinitely. If zero is specified, the event is discarded immediately, unless this activity has already been reached.

 

When building an expression in the Candidate Event Key field, only data from the incoming event is available. This is because you want to place an expression containing incoming event data in the Candidate Event Key field. When the results of this expression match the results of the expression in the "key" item on the Input tab, the Wait For HTTP Request activity proceeds.

Output Headers

The Output Headers tab describes the data structure for the headers of the HTTP request. You can use the default structure, or you can alter the structure, if the incoming request has a specific data structure for the header of the request. This tab uses the same mechanism described Appendix A, Specifying Data Schema in to specify the data structure for the headers. See that section for more information about creating a customized data structure.

Header structure is defined by the HTTP protocol. See the HTTP Protocol specification for more information about the fields and content of the header of a HTTP request. You can obtain this specification at www.w3.org.

The default header fields are the following.

Header	Datatype	Description
Accept	string	This field specifies media types that are acceptable for response messages for the incoming request. For example, text/*,text/html. Media types are described in the HTTP specification. If no Accept header field is present, then it is assumed that the client accepts all media types.
Accept-Charset	string	This field specifies the character sets that are acceptable for response messages for the incoming request. For example, iso-8859-5, unicode-1-1. Character sets are described in the HTTP specification. If no Accept-Charset header is present, then it is assumed that the client accepts any character set.
Accept-Encoding	string	This field specifies the content-coding values that are acceptable for response messages. For example, compress, gzip. See the HTTP specification for more information about this header field.
Content-Type	string	This field indicates the media type of the entity body sent to the receiver. Media types are described in the HTTP specification. An example of the media type is text/html; charset=ISO-8850-4.
Content-Length	string	This field indicates the size of the entity body (in decimal number of OCTETs) sent to the receiver. This field takes into account the encoding of the message body, see Special Characters in HTTP Requests for more information on when the message body is URL encoded.
Connection	string	This field allows the requestor to specify options desired for this connection. For example, the option close specifies that the requestor would like the connection to be closed when the request is complete.
Cookie	string	See the HTTP specification for more information about this field.
Pragma	string	This field is used to include implementation-specific directives that might apply to the receiver. See the HTTP specification for more information about using this field.

Input

See TIBCO ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks Process Design for more information about mapping and transforming input data.

The input for the activity is the following.

Input Item	Datatype	Description
key	string	The value that is compared to the Candidate Event Key field of the Event tab to determine if this message applies to this process. See Event for an example of using the Candidate Event Key field with the key input item.
processTimeout	integer	The time (in milliseconds) to wait for the incoming message. An error is returned if the message is not received in this time limit.

Output

The output for the activity is the following.

Output Item	Datatype	Description
Method	string	The HTTP method to use for the request. All HTTP 1.1 methods are supported.
RequestURI	string	The address portion of the request. This is the portion before the question mark (?).
HTTPVersion	string	Version field of the HTTP request.
PostData or BinaryContent	string	The message body of the HTTP request. The content of this element depends upon whether the message body is parsed. Parsing behavior is controlled by the Parse Post Method Data field on the Configuration tab). See Special Characters in HTTP Requests for more information.
Command	string	Command portion of the HTTP request.
QueryString	string	The query string portion of the request. This is the portion after the question mark (?).
Header	string	The header of the HTTP request.
DynamicHeaders	complex	The dynamic header is an additional header parameter to add runtime headers to the Outgoing Http Messages. This element is specified in the Input tab. Dynamic header consists of the following information: • Name — name of the header. • Value — value of the header. The following overriding conditions can be considered: • Overrides the value of HeaderName with the value found in DynamicHeaders if it is a non-repeating header. If more than one occurrence of this header is found under DynamicHeaders, it throws the following exception: "The header [ headerName ] is defined as non-Repeating Header in Input Headers. This header cannot have multiple occurences in DynamicHeaders." • If it is repeating element, add the respective name value pairs under dynamic headers, which will be added to the existing list maintained for this element. • For a repeating element, if the new header name is not found under Headers section declared via TIBCO Designer, following is added into the HTTP Headers. − Shows only one value, if found once in DynamicHeaders. − Shows array of values, if found repeating in DynamicHeaders.
Protocol	string	Can be either HTTP or HTTPS depending upon the protocol used by the request.
Port	string	Port number on which the request was received. This is the port number configured in the HTTP Connection resource.
mimeEnvelope Element	complex	This element contains the message attachments. This element contains a repeating element named mimePart that contains each mime attachment.
mimeHeaders	complex	This element contains the mime header for each mimePart. Mime headers can contain the following information: • content-disposition — To suggest a filename for an attachment, use "*;filename=<filename>" in this element. Note: HTTP servers may alter or choose to ignore the suggested name. • content-type • content-transfer-encoding • content-id • other mime header information See http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2045.html for more information about MIME headers and their syntax. Note: When the content type is specified as "text/*" (for example, "text/xml"), the attachment content is expected to be in either the textContent input element or the file name storing the attachment is expected to be in the fileName input element. When the content type is anything other than "text/*", the attachment content is expected to be in either the binaryContent input element or the file name storing the attachment is expected to be in the fileName input element.
binaryContent | textContent | fileName	choice	This element contains the mime attachment. The element can be one of the following: • binaryContent — content of the attachment when the attachment is binary data. • textConetnt — content of the attachment when the attachment is text data. • fileName — the file name of the attachment when the attachment is stored in the file system.
Headers	complex	The fields of the header specified on the Headers tab. See the description of the Headers tab for more information about these items.
parameters	complex	Parameters for the incoming request. These parameters are configured in the Parameters field on the Configuration tab. When the Parse Post Method Data field on the Configuration tab is checked, the parameters include the parameters in the query string and message body of the incoming HTTP request. When the Parse Post Method Data field is unchecked, the parameters only include the query string of the incoming request.

Error Output

The Error Output tab lists the possible exceptions that can be thrown by this activity. See TIBCO ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks Error Codes for more information about error codes and corrective action to take.

Exception	Thrown When...
ActivityTimedOutException	A timeout has been reached.

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