# Application Load balancer
**AWS** offers 3 types of load balancers as part of **Elastic Load Balancer (ELB)** service one is called **Classic Load Balancer**, **TCP load balancer** and the latest is the **Application load balancer (ALB)**.
ALB offers some unique features over Classic ELB and one of the features is **Path-based Routing**. What is Path-based Routing? well in simple terms the ALB could forward the incoming requests to different destinations based on the path as shown in the slide.Path-based routing example
## Example
In the above slide, if the request contains the text **/en/** the request would be forwarded to EC2 instance where our app (Hello World) is running in English and if the request contains the text **/es/**, then the request would be redirected to other EC2 instance and we will see the Hello World message in Spanish.
**Note**: In this post Setup of EC2 is not covered.
## Creating a Target Group
The first step is to set up the target groups, you need at least 2 target group to configure Path-based routing.
To start things click on the **Target Groups** under **EC2** Instances We have 2 EC2 Instances running, click Target Groups link to start
Click on **Create target group** buttonCreate a Target Group
In my example, I have set up 2 target groups one is called **‘en’** which routes to **/en/** and other is **‘es’** which routes to **/es/** as shown in the following slidesTarget group settings
Optionally set the **Advance Health Check settings** to the followingHealth check settings
## Adding EC2 Instances to Target Group
Next step is to add **EC2** instances to the **target groups**. Select the target group switch to the **Targets** tab and click the **Edit** button.Adding Targets EC2 Instances to the groupsAssign your instances to the group
## Create an Application Load Balancer
Now the main thing, we need to create the **Application Load Balancer.**Click on the **EC2** instances and then **Elastic Load Balancer** link
Click **Create** under **Application Load Balancer**Create ALB
**Name** your load balancer and add **ports** that your ALB would be listening on ALB name and Ports
**Select** the **Availability zones** that your ALB would be running ALB AZs
Select **Security Group** for ALB, make sure you allow ports that ALB is listening and forwarding onSecurity WarningSelect Security Group
Since we already created **Target group** select the **existing** target group **en**from the listSelect or Create Target GroupReview Target Instances Review ALB settings and click Create
Once created wait for few minutes to change the ALB **status** to **Active** ALB status
## Add Forwarding Rules
Now we have created our target groups and ALB. Now it’s time to add the Path based rules to our Application Load Balancer.
**Click** the **ALB name**, then select the **Listeners** tab and under Listener click **View/edit rules**Create or Edit ALB rules
Click the **+ sign** on top and click **Insert Rule** then select the **Rule type** as **Path**, enter **/es/** in the **is** and select a target group **es** in the **Forward to…**columnCreating Rules
Do the same for **/en/** at the end you should have 2 rules defined as followsPath-based rules
## Test
Once we have these rules created, copy the DNS name of the ALB and enter in the browser with **/en/** and **/es/** in the URL you should see the different sites accordingly.Test Results
P.S. Spanish translation is courtesy of Google Translate.
Hopefully, this post helps you to understand how to add Path-based routing to AWS Application Load Balancer. **Feel free to comment for any questions I would be happy to help.**