Translations:URL/1/en

URL is an abbreviation for Uniform Resource Locator. It was previously known as the Universal Resource Locator and is a type of Uniform Resource Identifier. The URL is a unique address or file path that represents the location of a file on the internet and also specifies the method to retrieve the resource from the location.

Every website on the internet has a unique URL, which can be entered into the address bar of a web browser to access and view it. Any other file or resource such as an image file, web (HTML) page other than the home page, Java applet and even programs imbedded inside a site, such as a Common Gateway Interface (CGI) application, can also be accessed using a URL.

The URL consists of a protocol that tells the web browser how to retrieve the file or resource; a domain name which identifies the specific web server on the Internet where the file is stored; and a pathname, which is a hierarchical description that specifies the location of the particular file on the computer.

Syntax

A typical URL is set up in the following way:

http://www.abcd.org/def/def1234.txt

The first part of the URL, in this case http, is the specified scheme. The HTTP (Hyptertest Transfer Protocol) scheme is used to transfer HTML pages on the web. Other protocols are ftp, gopher, mailto, and wais, which are all used for their own purpose. The scheme is separated from the rest of the URL by a colon; the rest of URL follows the colon in a format specific to the scheme.

The second part of the URL, in this case www.abcd.com, specifies a unique web server name. This name is a hierarchy of domains, descending from right to left and separated by a dot. The rightmost domain, or label, is the TLD.

Following the TLD, separated by forward slashes, is the location or pathname of a resource (in this example, a text file named def1234.txt), to be accessed on the computer.