title: Publishing to the default rabbitmq exchange using the http api
body: <p>So I am using rabbitmqs http api to do some very basic actions in rabbit. It works great in most situations but I am having an issue figuring out how to use it to publish a message to the default rabbitmq exchange. This exchange is always present, cannot be deleted and has a binding to every queue with a routing key equal to the queue name. </p>
  
  <p>My problem is that this queue does not have a name, or rather, it's name is an empty string "". And the URL I have to use to publish this message with the HTTP api includes the name of the exchange.</p>
  
  <p><a href="http://localhost:15672/api/exchanges/vhost/name/publish" rel="noreferrer">http://localhost:15672/api/exchanges/vhost/name/publish</a>
  (Source: <a href="http://hg.rabbitmq.com/rabbitmq-management/raw-file/rabbitmq_v3_3_4/priv/www/api/index.html" rel="noreferrer">http://hg.rabbitmq.com/rabbitmq-management/raw-file/rabbitmq_v3_3_4/priv/www/api/index.html</a>)</p>
  
  <p>The same article mentions that in order to use the default vhost which has a name of "/", you must use %2f in place of the vhost name. This makes me think there should be a similar way to represent the deafault exchange in the url.</p>
  
  <p>I tried a few different things and none of them worked:</p>
  
  <pre><code>/api/exchanges/vhost//publish
  /api/exchanges/vhost/""/publish
  /api/exchanges/vhost/''/publish
  /api/exchanges/vhost/ /publish
  /api/exchanges/vhost/%00/publish
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I'm sure I can't be the only person that has run into this issue. any help would be much appreciated. </p>
  
  <p>thanks,
  Tom</p>