iRule assistance

It's a matter of personal preference, but I like to consolidate iRules into one as much as possible.

You can use the return statement to prevent further logic from being executed under the same event within the same iRule

Does the following help?

when HTTP_REQUEST {
    if { [HTTP::path] starts_with "/resources/" } {
        pool pool_atldevngn
        return
    } 
    if { !( [class match [HTTP::uri] contains api_string] ) } {
        discard
        log local0. "connection DISCARDED from [IP::client_addr]"
        return
    }
    pool pool_atlapipool1
}