| Contents

# Adding URL Support

> The URLs lesson describes how the API user can pass a URL string to the initial context and have that URL be processed by a URL context implementation. This lesson shows you how to build a URL context implementation and make it available to the API user. This involves three steps:
> - Build an object factory that dispatches the request to the URL context implementation.
> - Build a context implementation to process the URL.
> - Set up the environment to make the object factory available to the user program.

> The JNDI uses the implementation as follows:

> - To process URL strings passed as the name argument to methods in the `InitialContext` class and its subclasses
> - To process URL strings in a `Reference` passed to `NamingManager.getObjectInstance()` and `DirectoryManager.getObjectInstance()`.
> This lesson describes these two ways in detail.

> > Prerequsite: Before embarking on this lesson, you should already know how to build a context implementation, the details of which are described in the The Essential Components lesson. If you are adding URL support to a directory context implementation, then you should also read the Adding Directory Support lesson.

| Contents