URL Evaluation and Resolution

When a customer enters a URL into their browser navigation bar, B2C Commerce evaluates the URL and resolves it in this sequence.

This topic assumes that the URL Rules module is enabled.

Note To check whether the URL Rules module is turned on, click App Launcher , and then select Merchant Tools | Site | Site Preferences | Storefront URLs.

If there are two identical URLs generated by the URL Rules module, B2C Commerce generates a conflict report that can be viewed on the URL Rules Page General tab.

1. If the entered URL matches a host name in the host alias file, the B2C Commerce server processes the host name to site mapping.
   

   Note The alias file-mapping rules aren’t applied at this point.

   1. The locale is resolved.

      If the URL Rule module is enabled and the locale mapping is set to path, then the first two elements of the URL are used to evaluate the locale. You can create a locale that uses one or two elements in the path. For example:

      http://mystore.com/s/SiteGenesis/en/mens
      http://mystore.com/s/SiteGenesis/de/DE/mens

      See also URL Rules Page Settings Tab for information about defining locale mappings.

2. The URL is processed:
   1. New URLs are resolved to the correct content asset, product, or other object.
      1. Pipeline URLs resolve.
      2. Folder URLs resolve.
      3. If a URL redirect for the incoming URL is found; it is executed. See also URL Redirects.
   2. If the URL can't be resolved:
      • If a URL doesn't match any object, this can be because of case differences in the URL or unencoded characters, The URL is resolved using case insensitive matching and substituting encoded characters for the following set of unencoded characters:

        , @ ) ! $ ' (~

      • Try to find the URL in the URL archive and resolve to the corresponding object. First check for a URL redirect from the incoming URL, otherwise redirect to new short URL of the object.
        

        Note If you’re migrating from a previous version of B2C Commerce, when you enable the URL Rules feature, B2C Commerce creates a list of existing URLs for B2C Commerce before creating new URLs. The list of old URLs is referred to as the archive.
   3. If not in the URL archive, check for URL redirects for the incoming URL and execute.
   4. Otherwise, fall back to Mapping Rules. The URL handling (dynamic/static) hasn’t changed from previous versions.