Application paths

Application paths define the URLs protected by an Access policy. When adding a self-hosted web application to Access, you can choose to protect the entire website by entering its apex domain, or alternatively, protect specific subdomains and paths.

​​ Policy inheritance

Cloudflare Zero Trust allows you to create unique rules for parts of an application that share a root path. Imagine an example application is deployed at dashboard.com/eng that anyone on the engineering team should be able to access. However, a tool deployed at dashboard.com/eng/exec should only be accessed by the executive team.

When multiple rules are set for a common root path, the more specific rule takes precedence. For example, when setting rules for dashboard.com/eng and dashboard.com/eng/exec separately, the more specific rule for dashboard.com/eng/exec takes precedence, and no rule is inherited from dashboard.com/eng. If no separate, specific rule is set for dashboard.com/eng/exec, it will inherit any rules set for dashboard.com/eng.

​​ Wildcards

When you create an application for a specific subdomain or path, you can use asterisks (*) as wildcards. Wildcards allow you to extend the application you are creating to multiple subdomains or paths in a given apex domain.

​​ Examples

​​ Match all subdomains of an apex domain

Using a wildcard in the Subdomain field does not cover the apex domain.

​​ Match all paths of an apex domain

To protect an apex domain and all of the paths under it, leave the Path field empty.

To protect all the paths under an apex domain, but not the apex domain itself, use a wildcard in the Path field.

​​ Match multi-level subdomains

Using a wildcard in the Subdomain field does not cover the parent subdomain nor the apex domain.

​​ Partially match subdomains

Using a wildcard at the beginning or end of the Subdomain field does not cover multiple levels of the subdomain.

​​ Match multi-level paths

Using a wildcard in the Path field does not cover the parent path nor the apex domain.

​​ Partially match paths

Using a wildcard in the middle of the Path field covers multiple segments of the URL.

​​ Limitations

• At most one wildcard in between each dot in the Subdomain. For example, foo*bar*baz.example.com is not allowed.
• At most one wildcard in between each slash in the Path. For example, example.com/foo*bar*baz is not allowed.

​​ Subdomain setups

Subdomain setups allow you to manage a child domain separately from its parent domain. In Access application paths, your configured child domains will appear in the Domain dropdown menu. If you split out a subdomain which already has an Access application, you will need to re-save the Access application to associate it with the new child domain.

​​ Unsupported URLs

​​ Port numbers

Port numbers are not supported in Access application paths. If a request includes a port number in the URL, Access will strip the port number and redirect the request to the default HTTP/HTTPS port.

​​ Anchor links

Since anchor links are processed by the browser and not the server, Access applications do not support # characters in the URL. For example, requests to dashboard.com/#settings will redirect to dashboard.com.