This documentation is archived and is not being maintained.

UriTemplate Class

A class that represents a Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) template.

Namespace:  System
Assembly:  System.ServiceModel.Web (in System.ServiceModel.Web.dll)

'Declaration
Public Class UriTemplate
'Usage
Dim instance As UriTemplate

A URI template allows you to define a set of structurally similar URIs. Templates are composed of two parts, a path and a query. A path consists of a series of segments delimited by a slash (/). Each segment can have a literal value, a variable value (written within curly braces [{ }], constrained to match the contents of exactly one segment), or a wildcard (written as an asterisk [*], which matches "the rest of the path"), which must appear at the end of the path. The query expression can be omitted entirely. If present, it specifies an unordered series of name/value pairs. Elements of the query expression can be either literal pairs (?x=2) or variable pairs (?x={val}). Unpaired values are not permitted. The following examples show valid template strings:

  • "weather/WA/Seattle"

  • "weather/{state}/{city}"

  • "weather/*"

  • "weather/{state}/{city}?forecast=today

  • "weather/{state}/{city}?forecast={day}

The preceding URI templates might be used for organizing weather reports. Segments enclosed in curly braces are variables, everything else is a literal. You can convert a UriTemplate instance into a Uri by replacing variables with actual values. For example, taking the template "weather/{state}/{city}" and putting in values for the variables "{state}" and "{city}" gives you "weather/WA/Seattle". Given a candidate URI, you can test whether it matches a given URI template by calling Match(Uri, Uri). You can also use UriTemplate instances to create a Uri from a set of variable values by calling BindByName(Uri, NameValueCollection) or BindByPosition(Uri, String()).

The following code demonstrates how to create a UriTemplate instance, and bind and match it to a candidate URI.

Dim template As UriTemplate = New UriTemplate("weather/{state}/{city}?forecast={day}")
Dim prefix As Uri = New Uri("http://localhost")

Console.WriteLine("PathSegmentVariableNames:")
For Each name As String In template.PathSegmentVariableNames
    Console.WriteLine("     {0}", name)
Next

Console.WriteLine()
Console.WriteLine("QueryValueVariableNames:")
For Each name As String In template.QueryValueVariableNames
    Console.WriteLine("     {0}", name)
Next
Console.WriteLine()

Dim positionalUri As Uri = template.BindByPosition(prefix, "Washington", "Redmond", "Today")

Dim parameters As NameValueCollection = New NameValueCollection()
parameters.Add("state", "Washington")
parameters.Add("city", "Redmond")
parameters.Add("day", "Today")
Dim namedUri As Uri = template.BindByName(prefix, parameters)

Dim fullUri As Uri = New Uri("http://localhost/weather/Washington/Redmond?forecast=today")
Dim results As UriTemplateMatch = template.Match(prefix, fullUri)

Console.WriteLine("Matching {0} to {1}", template.ToString(), fullUri.ToString())

If results IsNot Nothing Then 
    For Each variableName As String In results.BoundVariables.Keys
        Console.WriteLine("   {0}: {1}", variableName, results.BoundVariables(variableName))
    Next 
End If

Any public static (Shared in Visual Basic) members of this type are thread safe. Any instance members are not guaranteed to be thread safe.

Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP SP2, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2003

The .NET Framework and .NET Compact Framework do not support all versions of every platform. For a list of the supported versions, see .NET Framework System Requirements.

.NET Framework

Supported in: 3.5
Show: