Need help redirecting hundreds of host:uris to differentHOST:differentURI using datagroup and irule

Hi All.

I am using a BIG IP LTM v15.1.0.4

We have a file of 300 redirects that need to be handled by the F5 for one specific VIP. Its basically ONEHOST:ONEURI to ANOTHERHOST:ANOTHERURI. I have been unsuccessful in getting a datagroup and irule working to handle these redirects.

i have read through several threads and watched several videos but none of what I have learned and put in place is working. I figured out how to import the file of redirects to create the datagroup. However the irule does not seem to match anything.

As a troubleshooting step, I created a string datagroup using the GUI with one "string 😆 value" combination, but I get the same result (so Im thinking the problem is my irule). Here are two examples of what I put into the irule (niether worked):

when HTTP_REQUEST {
      if {[set redir_url [class match -value -- [string tolower [HTTP::host][HTTP::uri]] equals datagroup]] ne ""}{
        HTTP::respond [getfield redir_url " " 1] Location [getfield redir_url " " 2]
      }
}


when HTTP_REQUEST {
    if {[set redir_url [class match -value -- [string tolower [HTTP::host][HTTP::uri]] equals datagroup]] ne "" }{
    HTTP::redirect $redir_url
    }
}

I also tried changing "equals" to "contains" and also "like" but that didn't help either.

In my datagroup, I tried "https://mycompany.com/linkA" := "https://anothercompany.com/newlink". I tried with and without the "https://", but cant seem to get a match

I'm hoping I have a simple syntax error that someone can help me with. Any advice is appreciated.