Change iRule variable without reloading rule

Hello,

 

 

I need to be able to change the value of a variable that is used in my iRule, without editing the irule and having to reload it (which would cause service interruption.)

 

 

Really what I want to do is just have the iRule read a value from a file every time it needs to make a certain calculation. That way if I want the value to change I can just update the file, and next time the iRule would need the value it would re-read it. However,using open/close on files seems to be disabled in iRules, so I can't do it that way.

 

 

I might be able to do something like send an http request to the iRule in order to change the value, basically encode my new value in the uri, but I was wondering if anyone has other suggestions or best practices.

 

 

Thanks,

 

Scott