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Use Rules simulator

Last updated View as MarkdownAgent setup

Use Rules simulator in the dashboard

1. Configure one or more Cloudflare products

  1. Log in to the Cloudflare dashboard ↗︎, and select your account.
  2. Set configuration settings at the account level, or select a domain and configure settings for one or more Cloudflare products.

2. Build a simulation

  1. In the Cloudflare dashboard, go to the Simulator page.

    Go to Rules simulator ↗

  2. Enter a URL to simulate. The URL must include a hostname that belongs to your account.

  3. Select an HTTP method. If you select POST, PUT, or PATCH, you should enter a value in Request Body.

  4. (Optional) Define any custom request properties to simulate the conditions of a specific HTTP/S request. You can customize the following request properties:

    • Protocol (HTTP protocol version)
    • User Agent and Request Headers
    • Cookies
    • Geolocation (request source country, region, and city)
    • Bot Score
    • Request Body (for POST, PUT, and PATCH requests)
    • Skip Challenge (skips a Cloudflare-issued challenge, if any, allowing the simulation to continue)

  5. Select Run simulation.

3. Assess results

The Simulation results page shows all evaluated and executed configurations from different Cloudflare products, in evaluation order. Any inactive rules are not evaluated.

  1. Analyze the different steps with evaluated and executed configurations for the current simulation. Simulation results include matches for all active rules and configurations, whether configured at the account level or for a specific domain or subdomain.

    To show all configurations, including the ones that did not match the request, select All configurations in the Results shown dropdown.

  2. (Optional) Update your Cloudflare configuration (at the account or at the domain/subdomain level) and run a new simulation to check the impact of your changes.

4. (Optional) Save the simulation configuration

To run a simulation later with the same configuration:

  1. Copy the JSON shown in the dashboard with the current simulation configuration.
  2. When creating a new simulation, paste it in the JSON box to define all the settings of the new simulation.

Use Rules simulator via API

Use the Request Trace operation to perform a simulation using the Cloudflare API.

Steps in simulation results

  • Execution of one or more rules of Cloudflare products built on the Ruleset Engine. Refer to the Ruleset Engine's Phases list for a list of such products.
  • Page Rules: Execution of one or more rules.
  • Workers: Execution of one or more scripts.

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