Custom URL wildcard

[DavePalo]

Hi all,

I have a question relating to wildcards in a Custom URL Category on PA-500 - 4.1.0

I have the following entry in my custom URL category

     *.centos.org

and I'm finding that I'm getting a match with the following URL (and many others)

     mirror.ox.ac.uk/sites/mirror.centos.org/5.7/updates/i386/RPMS/kernel-2.6.18-274.7.1.el5.i686.rpm

Is this correct please? What I intended to match on was server-x.centos.org/, server-y.centos.org etc.

Any info would be appreciated!

Many Thanks,

Dave

[sjamaluddin]

Hi

*.centos.org

will match everything that comes in as <xyz>.centos.com

so you will see multiple matches - as you do.

If however, you'd like to be able to match ONLY and not any of the others

server-x.centos.org/, server-y.centos.org

then you may have to specify the URLs explicitly

HTH

[DavePalo]

Thanks for your reply!

My issue is that *.centos.org matches URLs that contain this string anywhere, rather than just the host name portion of the URL.

Regards,

Dave

[dyang]

Hi Dave,

In the example you provided:

     *.centos.org

and I'm finding that I'm getting a match with the following URL (and many others)

     mirror.ox.ac.uk/sites/mirror.centos.org/5.7/updates/i386/RPMS/kernel-2.6.18-274.7.1.el5.i686.rpm

this is expected behavior, since the wildcard matches anything before ".centos.org"  The example URL you provided matched because you have "mirror.ox.ac.uk/sites/mirror" preceding the pattern you defined.  Is your intention to only match when the URL only has one token preceding ".centos.org"?  For example, match "abc.centos.org" and not "def.abc.centos.org"?

--Doris

[DavePalo]

Hi Doris,

Thanks - it's my intention to match any host name ending in .centos.org

For example,

server.centos.org/blah/blah/

other.server.centos.org/blah/blah/blah/

    but not

mirror.ox.ac.uk/sites/mirror.centos.org/5.7/updates/i386/RPMS/kernel-2.6.18-274.7.1.el5.i686.rpm

Thanks

Dave

[rapoint_person]

OK, so the wildcard in the URL-filter makes no distinction between URI-path and the host portion? Is that true in all releases?

[DavePalo]

Does anybody know if this is the case please?

[dyang · Accepted solution]

Hi Dave,

Oskar (in the post before yours) is correct - currently the wildcard will look for the specified pattern in both the host as well as the path, and this behavior should be the same across all releases.  We hope to address the ability to limit patterns to either the host or the path in an upcoming release, so stay tuned.

Thanks,

Doris

[rapoint_person]

OK, thanks for the info. Hope this does change in a future release. I bet 99.9% of us using the feature in question are under the assumption that the pattern is matched against the host portion of the URL.

[DavePalo]

Thank you both for your help!

Yes this would be a most useful enhancement and would bring it in line with how I thought it worked!

Thanks,
Dave