[web-services] What is a web service endpoint?

In past projects I worked on, the endpoint was a relative property. That is to say it may or may not have been appended to, but it always contained the protocol://host:port/partOfThePath.

If the service being called had a dynamic part to it, for example a ?param=dynamicValue, then that part would get added to the endpoint. But many times the endpoint could be used as is without having to be amended.

Whats important to understand is what an endpoint is not and how it helps. For example an alternative way to pass the information stored in an endpoint would be to store the different parts of the endpoint in separate properties. For example:

hostForServiceA=someIp
portForServiceA=8080
pathForServiceA=/some/service/path
hostForServiceB=someIp
portForServiceB=8080
pathForServiceB=/some/service/path

Or if the same host and port across multiple services:

host=someIp
port=8080
pathForServiceA=/some/service/path
pathForServiceB=/some/service/path

In those cases the full URL would need to be constructed in your code as such:

String url = "http://" + host + ":" + port + pathForServiceA  + "?" + dynamicParam + "=" + dynamicValue;

In contract this can be stored as an endpoint as such

serviceAEndpoint=http://host:port/some/service/path?dynamicParam=

And yes many times we stored the endpoint up to and including the '='. This lead to code like this:

String url = serviceAEndpoint + dynamicValue;

Hope that sheds some light.

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