Create advanced policies

  • 3 minutes

This unit provides a reference for the following API Management policies:

  • Control flow - Conditionally applies policy statements based on the results of the evaluation of Boolean expressions.
  • Forward request - Forwards the request to the backend service.
  • Limit concurrency - Prevents enclosed policies from executing by more than the specified number of requests at a time.
  • Log to Event Hub - Sends messages in the specified format to an Event Hub defined by a Logger entity.
  • Mock response - Aborts pipeline execution and returns a mocked response directly to the caller.
  • Retry - Retries execution of the enclosed policy statements, if and until the condition is met. Execution will repeat at the specified time intervals and up to the specified retry count.

Control flow

The choose policy applies enclosed policy statements based on the outcome of evaluation of boolean expressions, similar to an if-then-else or a switch construct in a programming language.

<choose>
    <when condition="Boolean expression | Boolean constant">
        <!— one or more policy statements to be applied if the above condition is true  -->
    </when>
    <when condition="Boolean expression | Boolean constant">
        <!— one or more policy statements to be applied if the above condition is true  -->
    </when>
    <otherwise>
        <!— one or more policy statements to be applied if none of the above conditions are true  -->
</otherwise>
</choose>

The control flow policy must contain at least one <when/> element. The <otherwise/> element is optional. Conditions in <when/> elements are evaluated in order of their appearance within the policy. Policy statement(s) enclosed within the first <when/> element with condition attribute equals true will be applied. Policies enclosed within the <otherwise/> element, if present, will be applied if all of the <when/> element condition attributes are false.

Forward request

The forward-request policy forwards the incoming request to the backend service specified in the request context. The backend service URL is specified in the API settings and can be changed using the set backend service policy.

Removing this policy results in the request not being forwarded to the backend service and the policies in the outbound section are evaluated immediately upon the successful completion of the policies in the inbound section.

<forward-request timeout="time in seconds" follow-redirects="true | false"/>

Limit concurrency

The limit-concurrency policy prevents enclosed policies from executing by more than the specified number of requests at any time. Upon exceeding that number, new requests will fail immediately with a 429 Too Many Requests status code.

<limit-concurrency key="expression" max-count="number">
        <!— nested policy statements -->
</limit-concurrency>

Log to Event Hub

The log-to-eventhub policy sends messages in the specified format to an Event Hub defined by a Logger entity. As its name implies, the policy is used for saving selected request or response context information for online or offline analysis.

<log-to-eventhub logger-id="id of the logger entity" partition-id="index of the partition where messages are sent" partition-key="value used for partition assignment">
  Expression returning a string to be logged
</log-to-eventhub>

Mock response

The mock-response, as the name implies, is used to mock APIs and operations. It aborts normal pipeline execution and returns a mocked response to the caller. The policy always tries to return responses of highest fidelity. It prefers response content examples, whenever available. It generates sample responses from schemas, when schemas are provided and examples are not. If neither examples or schemas are found, responses with no content are returned.

<mock-response status-code="code" content-type="media type"/>

Retry

The retry policy executes its child policies once and then retries their execution until the retry condition becomes false or retry count is exhausted.

<retry
    condition="boolean expression or literal"
    count="number of retry attempts"
    interval="retry interval in seconds"
    max-interval="maximum retry interval in seconds"
    delta="retry interval delta in seconds"
    first-fast-retry="boolean expression or literal">
        <!-- One or more child policies. No restrictions -->
</retry>

Return response

The return-response policy aborts pipeline execution and returns either a default or custom response to the caller. Default response is 200 OK with no body. Custom response can be specified via a context variable or policy statements. When both are provided, the response contained within the context variable is modified by the policy statements before being returned to the caller.

<return-response response-variable-name="existing context variable">
  <set-header/>
  <set-body/>
  <set-status/>
</return-response>

Additional resources