Routing

​​ Background

Routing lets customers connect a Worker to the Internet, allowing it to receive HTTP requests on their Cloudflare zones. There are two ways to route to a Worker:

1. Custom Domains .

and

2. Routes .

Routes add Workers functionality to your existing proxied (orange-clouded) hostnames, as a proxy in front of your application server.

Custom Domains can replace the proxy (orange-cloud) process entirely. Custom Domains automatically attach a Worker to your hostname by creating a DNS record and an SSL certificate on your behalf. Custom Domains can also be invoked within the same zone via fetch(), unlike Routes.

​​ Custom Domains

Custom Domains allow you to attach a Worker to a hostname. Cloudflare will create DNS records and issue necessary certificates on your behalf. The DNS records will point directly to your Worker.

Custom Domains are recommended if you want to connect your Worker to the Internet and do not have a default application server that you want to always communicate with. If you do have external dependencies, you can create a Request object with the target URI, and call fetch().

Custom Domains can stack on top of each other. For example, if you have Worker A attached to app.example.com and Worker B attached to api.example.com, Worker A can call fetch() on api.example.com and invoke Worker B.

​​ Routes

Routes are a set of rules that evaluate against a request’s URL. Routes are recommended for you if you have a designated application server you always need to communicate with. Calling fetch() on the incoming Request object will trigger a subrequest to your application server, as defined in DNS of your Cloudflare zone.

Routes can fetch() Custom Domains and take precedence if configured on the same hostname. If you would like to run a logging Worker in front of your application, for example, you can create a Custom Domain on your application Worker for app.example.com, and create a Route for your logging Worker at app.example.com/*. Calling fetch() will invoke the application Worker on your Custom Domain. Note that Routes cannot be the target of a same-zone fetch() call.

​​ What is best for me?

Generally, Routes are good for use cases where the Worker acts like a ‘proxy’, making small modifications to the Request, Response, or logging data in between the user and the server.

Custom Domains are recommended for more in-depth use cases, where your application lives on the Cloudflare network and may optionally communicate with external dependencies.