Object model

IG processes HTTP requests and responses by passing them through user-defined chains of filters and handlers. The filters and handlers provide access to the request and response at each step in the chain, and make it possible to alter the request or response, and collect contextual information.

The following image illustrates a typical sequence of events when IG processes a request and response through a chain:

When IG processes a request, it first builds an object representation of the request, including parsed query/form parameters, cookies, headers, and the entity. IG initializes a runtime context to provide additional metadata about the request and applied transformations. IG then passes the request representation into the chain.

In the request flow, filters modify the request representation and can enrich the runtime context with computed information. In the ClientHandler, the entity content is serialized, and additional query parameters can be encoded as described in RFC 3986: Query.

In the response flow, filters build a response representation with headers and the entity.

The route configuration in Adding headers and logging results demonstrates the flow through a chain to a protected application.