Translating internal links in IAG portals

Applies To: Intelligent Application Gateway (IAG)

A Whale Communications Intelligent Application Gateway (IAG) 2007 portal enables access to multiple Web applications by using host address translation (HAT). While users communicate with the external IAG Web site to request, receive, and upload data to and from the applications they access via IAG, IAG transparently parses the requests and responses by using content-type parsers, and manipulates the URLs in those transactions, on the fly. The parsers manipulate the data so that, to the user, all links to the applications that are enabled via the portal point to one host—the public host. For more information about how HAT processes and manipulates data and URLs, see About host address translation (HAT) in IAG portals.

Configuring HAT properties in the Application Access Portal tab

You can configure the following HAT properties:

• Define global parameters. For more information, see Configuring global HAT parameters in IAG.

• Define a list of URLS on which you do not want to run the content-type parser in either the body of the request, the response, or both (for example, on pages that contain no links or pages where all the links are relative path URLs where there is no need for link replacement because the server name does not appear in the URL). You can configure this per application server or per application type. For more information, see Skipping body parsing for HAT configuration in IAG. By default, body data is manipulated in requests for the following content types:

  • XML: text/xml

  • POST requests containing forms of the following type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded:

• Define a list of URLs on which you want to run a search and replace parser on the body of the response. The search and replace engine manipulates absolute URLs in order to hide link names in body data that is not otherwise handled by the content-specific parser (for example, Java comments or URLs that appear within HTML text tags). The search and replace engine runs on the entire HTTP data in the application or in the trunk, including all tags. It is applicable for responses only. You can configure this per application server or per application type. For more information, see Configuring search and replace parsing for HAT configuration in IAG.

• Define a list of URLs that, when requested, will be redirected or rerouted to the specified location. For more information, see Manually replacing URLs for HAT configuration in IAG.

Configuring HAT properties in the Application Access Portal configuration files

In addition to the HAT properties you can configure in the Application Access

Portal tab, you can configure the following options in the Application Access Portal configuration files:

• Additional tags that will be parsed by the content-type parsers in responses. By default, the content-type parsers are configured so that all tags that can contain links are parsed during data manipulation. For more information, see Defining content-type parsers in responses for HAT configuration in IAG.

• Define data change in responses, including token-to-token replacement and signature injection. For more information, see Configuring data change for HAT configuration in IAG.

• Define cookie manipulation in responses. For more information, see Manipulating cookies for HAT configuration in IAG.

• Filtering headers in requests. For details, see Filtering headers in requests for HAT configuration in IAG.

• Exclude servers that will not be manipulated by HAT. For more information, see Excluding servers from link translation for HAT configuration in IAG.

Before you begin

The files that control HAT configuration are located under the following folder: \Whale-Com\e-Gap\Von\Conf\SRATemplates

The files that control HAT configuration are named as follows:

• For HTTP trunks: WhlFiltSecureRemote_HTTP.xml

• For HTTPS trunks: WhlFiltSecureRemote_HTTPS.xml

When the configuration is activated and the trunk’s internal Web site is created, the files are copied under the following location:

Whale-Com\e-Gap\Von\Conf\Websites\<Trunk_Name>\Conf

In order to make changes to the default settings, copy the file you wish to edit into the following custom folder, and make your changes there; if this folder does not exist, you need to create it:

\Whale-Com\e-Gap\Von\Conf\Websites\<Trunk_Name>\Conf\CustomUpdate

The changes you make in the custom file are merged with the definitions of the file that is supplied with the system. Note that you can use the files to configure only the options described in this topic. Do not configure other values.

The configuration files follow these conventions:

• Tag names are uppercase:

  <TAG>…</TAG>

• Attribute names are lowercase:

  <TAG attribute=value>…</TAG>

• Attribute values are not case sensitive:

  <TAG attribute=value>…</TAG>

  is identical to:

  <TAG attribute=VALUE>…</TAG>

• Some XML elements take regular expressions in the data. When regular expressions are used, this is indicated in the description of the element usage. When using regular expressions, note the following:

  • In order to use a character as is, make sure it is preceded by a slash. For example, to use the asterisk (*) wildcard in data that takes regular expression enter \*.