ParsePayload policy

Extensible policy

This page applies to Apigee and Apigee hybrid.

View Apigee Edge documentation.

The ParsePayload policy extracts logical operations from structured request payloads (such as JSON-RPC 2.0) into message flow variables. This functionality enables the proxy admin to implement conditional routing logic directly based on client request contents rather than basic resource paths or query parameters.

Note: The ParsePayload policy is available in Apigee 1-17-0-apigee-7 and later, and in Apigee Hybrid version 1.16.1 and later.

Warning: The ParsePayload policy does not support message streaming. Using this policy with streaming enabled on the request or response will cause errors. See Payload with Streaming Antipattern for more information.

This policy is an Extensible policy and use of this policy might have cost or utilization implications, depending on your Apigee license. For information on policy types and usage implications, see Policy types.

<ParsePayload> element

Specifies validation parsing properties applied toward application logic evaluation cycles.

Required?	Required
Parent Element	n/a
Child Elements	<Source> <PayloadType> <Protocol>

Syntax

The ParsePayload element uses the following syntax:

<ParsePayload continueOnError="[false|true]" enabled="[true|false]" name="policy_name">
    <Source>request</Source>
    <PayloadType>JSON-RPC-2.0</PayloadType>
    <Protocol>MCP</Protocol>
</ParsePayload>

Example

The following example shows a standard configuration for the ParsePayload policy:

<ParsePayload continueOnError="false" enabled="true" name="parse-payload-mcp">
    <Source>request</Source>
    <PayloadType>JSON-RPC-2.0</PayloadType>
    <Protocol>MCP</Protocol>
</ParsePayload>

<Source>

Indicates the request/response container context processed immediately through runtime evaluations.

<Source>request</Source>

Attribute	Description	Default	Presence
N/A	Text node value. Must be request or response.	request	Optional

<PayloadType>

Governs overall evaluation structures recognized regarding data processing requirements.

<PayloadType>JSON-RPC-2.0</PayloadType>

Attribute	Description	Default	Presence
N/A	Text node value. Supported values: JSON-RPC-2.0.	N/A	Required

<Protocol>

Determines formatting behaviors corresponding precisely with target interface declarations.

<Protocol>MCP</Protocol>

Attribute	Description	Default	Presence
N/A	Text node value. Supported value: MCP.	N/A	Required

Extracted Flow Variables

After the policy executes successfully, it populates flow variables prefixed with the policy instance name. These variables follow the pattern parsepayload.policyName.suffix, where policyName is the value of the name attribute in the policy XML configuration. This naming convention is consistent with other Apigee policies such as VerifyAPIKey and allows multiple ParsePayload policies in the same proxy to maintain distinct variable namespaces.

For a policy named parse-payload-mcp, the following variables are set:

Variable Name	Description
parsepayload.parse-payload-mcp.operation	Constructed execution identifier. For tools/call, it is tools/call/{name} (e.g., tools/call/get_weather), distinguishing the specific tool being invoked. For tools/list, it is tools/list, used when listing available tools without targeting a specific one.
parsepayload.parse-payload-mcp.json-rpc.request.method	The method field from the JSON-RPC request (e.g., tools/call or tools/list).
parsepayload.parse-payload-mcp.json-rpc.request.id	The id field from the JSON-RPC request.
parsepayload.parse-payload-mcp.json-rpc.request.params.name	The name field inside params (populated for tools/call to identify the tool).
parsepayload.parse-payload-mcp.json-rpc.request.params.arguments.{arg_name}	Arguments passed in the arguments object. String values are stored directly; nested objects or arrays are stored as serialized JSON strings.

Example

For the following JSON-RPC request payload with simple arguments:

{
  "jsonrpc": "2.0",
  "id": "req_001",
  "method": "tools/call",
  "params": {
    "name": "get_weather",
    "arguments": {
      "location": "San Francisco, CA",
      "forecast_days": 3
    }
  }
}

The policy populates the following variables:

Variable	Value
parsepayload.parse-payload-mcp.operation	tools/call/get_weather
parsepayload.parse-payload-mcp.json-rpc.request.method	tools/call
parsepayload.parse-payload-mcp.json-rpc.request.id	req_001
parsepayload.parse-payload-mcp.json-rpc.request.params.name	get_weather
parsepayload.parse-payload-mcp.json-rpc.request.params.arguments.location	San Francisco, CA
parsepayload.parse-payload-mcp.json-rpc.request.params.arguments.forecast_days	3