Request Matching - Matching URLs

For most HTTP APIs the URL is the primary means by which the appropriate action is selected. WireMock Cloud provides a number of different options for matching the URL of an incoming request to a stub.

Path vs path + query

It’s important to be clear exactly which part(s) of the URL you wish to match.

The default strategy WireMock Cloud uses is to match both the path and query parts of the URL. For instance, if you were you to enter the following in a stub’s URL field:

/my/path?q=abc&limit=10

then the stub would only be matched if that exact path and query were present e.g. for the URL:

https://my-api.wiremockapi.cloud/my/path?q=abc&limit=10

However, it’s often desirable just to look at the path part of the URL, and either ignore the query completely or specify it more flexibly using dedicated query parameter matchers (see Query Parameters). Dedicated query matchers can be useful if the parameter order in the URL can change, or if you need to match more loosely on the value e.g. using contains rater than exact equality.

To do this, you need to change the URL match type in the Advanced section to Path and ensure you only specify a path in the URL field e.g.

/my/path

This would now match any of the following URLs:

https://my-api.wiremockapi.cloud/my/path?q=abc
https://my-api.wiremockapi.cloud/my/path?q=abc&limit=10
https://my-api.wiremockapi.cloud/my/path
https://my-api.wiremockapi.cloud/my/path?randomqueryparam=123

Match type - exact vs. regular expression

In addition to choosing the URL part(s) you wish to match, you can also choose whether to check for exact equality or a regular expression match. By default WireMock Cloud uses an equality check, but this can be changed in the Advanced section.

Choosing the the Path regex match type can be particularly useful in cases where the API you’re mocking uses path parameters and you wish to provide a meaningful response to a specific URL pattern regardless of the specific parameter values.

For instance, choosing Path regex as the match type with the following URL

/users/[0-9]+

would match any of the following request URLs:

/users/1
/users/9832749823
/users/321

A powerful approach is to combine this with Response Templating so that the ID used in the URL can be inserted into the response body.

note

Using the Path and query regex is generally not advised. This exists primarily for compatibility with projects exported to/from WireMock.

Matching any URL

In some cases you need a stub to match any request URL. A common use case for this is providing a low priority default response which is matched only if nothing else does. You might also choose to proxy the request to another endpoint in this case.

For this purpose use the Any URL option from the URL match type list under Advanced.