RFC2396 - Uniform Resource Identifiers (URI): Generic Syntax

Uniform Resource Identifiers (URI): Generic Syntax

Status of this Memo

This document specifies an Internet standards track protocol for the
Internet community, and requests discussion and suggestions for
improvements. Please refer to the current edition of the "Internet
Official Protocol Standards" (STD 1) for the standardization state
and status of this protocol. Distribution of this memo is unlimited.

Copyright Notice

Copyright (C) The Internet Society (1998). All Rights Reserved.

IESG Note

This paper describes a "superset" of operations that can be applied
to URI. It consists of both a grammar and a description of basic
functionality for URI. To understand what is a valid URI, both the
grammar and the associated description have to be studied. Some of
the functionality described is not applicable to all URI schemes, and
some operations are only possible when certain media types are
retrieved using the URI, regardless of the scheme used.

Abstract

A Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) is a compact string of characters
for identifying an abstract or physical resource. This document
defines the generic syntax of URI, including both absolute and
relative forms, and guidelines for their use; it revises and replaces
the generic definitions in RFC1738 and RFC1808.

This document defines a grammar that is a superset of all valid URI,
such that an implementation can parse the common components of a URI
reference without knowing the scheme-specific requirements of every
possible identifier type. This document does not define a generative
grammar for URI; that task will be performed by the individual
specifications of each URI scheme.

1. Introduction

Uniform Resource Identifiers (URI) provide a simple and extensible
means for identifying a resource. This specification of URI syntax
and semantics is derived from concepts introduced by the World Wide
Web global information initiative, whose use of such objects dates
from 1990 and is described in "Universal Resource Identifiers in WWW"
[RFC1630]. The specification of URI is designed to meet the
recommendations laid out in "Functional Recommendations for Internet
Resource Locators" [RFC1736] and "Functional Requirements for Uniform
Resource Names" [RFC1737].

This document updates and merges "Uniform Resource Locators"
[RFC1738] and "Relative Uniform Resource Locators" [RFC1808] in order
to define a single, generic syntax for all URI. It excludes those
portions of RFC1738 that defined the specific syntax of individual
URL schemes; those portions will be updated as separate documents, as
will the process for registration of new URI schemes. This document
does not discuss the issues and recommendation for dealing with
characters outside of the US-ASCII character set [ASCII]; those
recommendations are discussed in a separate document.

All significant changes from the prior RFCs are noted in Appendix G.

1.1 Overview of URI

URI are characterized by the following definitions:

Uniform
Uniformity provides several benefits: it allows different types
of resource identifiers to be used in the same context, even
when the mechanisms used to access those resources may differ;
it allows uniform semantic interpretation of common syntactic
conventions across different types of resource identifiers; it
allows introduction of new types of resource identifiers
without interfering with the way that existing identifiers are
used; and, it allows the identifiers to be reused in many
different contexts, thus permitting new applications or
protocols to leverage a pre-existing, large, and widely-used
set of resource identifiers.

Resource
A resource can be anything that has identity. Familiar
examples include an electronic document, an image, a service
(e.g., "today's weather report for Los Angeles"), and a
collection of other resources. Not all resources are network
"retrievable"; e.g., human beings, corporations, and bound
books in a library can also be considered resources.

The resource is the conceptual mapping to an entity or set of
entities, not necessarily the entity which corresponds to that
mapping at any particular instance in time. Thus, a resource
can remain constant even when its content---the entities to
which it currently corresponds---changes over time, provided
that the conceptual mapping is not changed in the process.

Identifier
An identifier is an object that can act as a reference to
something that has identity. In the case of URI, the object is
a sequence of characters with a restricted syntax.

Having identified a resource, a system may perform a variety of
operations on the resource, as might be characterized by such words
as `access', `update', `replace', or `find attributes'.

1.2. URI, URL, and URN

A URI can be further classified as a locator, a name, or both. The
term "Uniform Resource Locator" (URL) refers to the subset of URI
that identify resources via a representation of their primary access
mechanism (e.g., their network "location"), rather than identifying
the resource by name or by some other attribute(s) of that resource.
The term "Uniform Resource Name" (URN) refers to the subset of URI
that are required to remain globally unique and persistent even when
the resource ceases to exist or becomes unavailable.

The URI scheme (Section 3.1) defines the namespace of the URI, and
thus may further restrict the syntax and semantics of identifiers
using that scheme. This specification defines those elements of the
URI syntax that are either required of all URI schemes or are common
to many URI schemes. It thus defines the syntax and semantics that
are needed to implement a scheme-independent parsing mechanism for
URI references, such that the scheme-dependent handling of a URI can
be postponed until the scheme-dependent semantics are needed. We use
the term URL below when describing syntax or semantics that only
apply to locators.

Although many URL schemes are named after protocols, this does not
imply that the only way to access the URL's resource is via the named
protocol. Gateways, proxies, caches, and name resolution services
might be used to access some resources, independent of the protocol
of their origin, and the resolution of some URL may require the use
of more than one protocol (e.g., both DNS and HTTP are typically used
to access an "http" URL's resource when it can't be found in a local
cache).

A URN differs from a URL in that it's primary purpose is persistent
labeling of a resource with an identifier. That identifier is drawn
from one of a set of defined namespaces, each of which has its own
set name structure and assignment procedures. The "urn" scheme has
been reserved to establish the requirements for a standardized URN
namespace, as defined in "URN Syntax" [RFC2141] and its related
specifications.

Most of the examples in this specification demonstrate URL, since
they allow the most varied use of the syntax and often have a
hierarchical namespace. A parser of the URI syntax is capable of
parsing both URL and URN references as a generic URI; once the scheme
is determined, the scheme-specific parsing can be performed on the
generic URI components. In other words, the URI syntax is a superset
of the syntax of all URI schemes.

1.3. Example URI

The following examples illustrate URI that are in common use.

ftp://ftp.is.co.za/rfc/rfc1808.txt
-- ftp scheme for File Transfer Protocol services

gopher://spinaltap.micro.umn.edu/00/Weather/California/Los%20Angeles
-- gopher scheme for Gopher and Gopher+ Protocol services

http://www.math.uio.no/faq/compression-faq/part1.html
-- http scheme for Hypertext Transfer Protocol services

mailto:[email protected]
-- mailto scheme for electronic mail addresses

news:comp.infosystems.www.servers.unix
-- news scheme for USENET news groups and articles

telnet://melvyl.ucop.edu/
-- telnet scheme for interactive services via the TELNET Protocol

1.4. Hierarchical URI and Relative Forms

An absolute identifier refers to a resource independent of the
context in which the identifier is used. In contrast, a relative
identifier refers to a resource by describing the difference within a
hierarchical namespace between the current context and an absolute
identifier of the resource.

Some URI schemes support a hierarchical naming system, where the
hierarchy of the name is denoted by a "/" delimiter separating the
components in the scheme. This document defines a scheme-independent
`relative' form of URI reference that can be used in conjunction with
a `base' URI (of a hierarchical scheme) to produce another URI. The
syntax of hierarchical URI is described in Section 3; the relative
URI calculation is described in Section 5.

1.5. URI Transcribability

The URI syntax was designed with global transcribability as one of
its main concerns. A URI is a sequence of characters from a very
limited set, i.e. the letters of the basic Latin alphabet, digits,
and a few special characters. A URI may be represented in a variety
of ways: e.g., ink on paper, pixels on a screen, or a sequence of
octets in a coded character set. The interpretation of a URI depends
only on the characters used and not how those characters are
represented in a network protocol.

The goal of transcribability can be described by a simple scenario.
Imagine two colleagues, Sam and Kim, sitting in a pub at an
international conference and exchanging research ideas. Sam asks Kim
for a location to get more information, so Kim writes the URI for the
research site on a napkin. Upon returning home, Sam takes out the
napkin and types the URI into a computer, which then retrieves the
information to which Kim referred.

There are several design concerns revealed by the scenario:

o A URI is a sequence of characters, which is not always
represented as a sequence of octets.

o A URI may be transcribed from a non-network source, and thus
should consist of characters that are most likely to be able to
be typed into a computer, within the constraints imposed by
keyboards (and related input devices) across languages and
locales.

o A URI often needs to be remembered by people, and it is easier
for people to remember a URI when it consists of meaningful
components.

These design concerns are not always in alignment. For example, it
is often the case that the most meaningful name for a URI component
would require characters that cannot be typed into some systems. The
ability to transcribe the resource identifier from one medium to
another was considered more important than having its URI consist of
the most meaningful of components. In local and regional contexts

and with improving technology, users might benefit from being able to
use a wider range of characters; such use is not defined in this
document.

1.6. Syntax Notation and Common Elements

This document uses two conventions to describe and define the syntax
for URI. The first, called the layout form, is a general description
of the order of components and component separators, as in

<first>/<second>;<third>?<fourth>

The component names are enclosed in angle-brackets and any characters
outside angle-brackets are literal separators. Whitespace should be
ignored. These descriptions are used informally and do not define
the syntax requirements.

The second convention is a BNF-like grammar, used to define the
formal URI syntax. The grammar is that of [RFC822], except that "|"
is used to designate alternatives. Briefly, rules are separated from
definitions by an equal "=", indentation is used to continue a rule
definition over more than one line, literals are quoted with "",
parentheses "(" and ")" are used to group elements, optional elements
are enclosed in "[" and "]" brackets, and elements may be preceded
with <n>* to designate n or more repetitions of the following
element; n defaults to 0.

Unlike many specifications that use a BNF-like grammar to define the
bytes (octets) allowed by a protocol, the URI grammar is defined in
terms of characters. Each literal in the grammar corresponds to the
character it represents, rather than to the octet encoding of that
character in any particular coded character set. How a URI is
represented in terms of bits and bytes on the wire is dependent upon
the character encoding of the protocol used to transport it, or the
charset of the document which contains it.

The following definitions are common to many elements:

alpha = lowalpha | upalpha

lowalpha = "a" | "b" | "c" | "d" | "e" | "f" | "g" | "h" | "i" |
"j" | "k" | "l" | "m" | "n" | "o" | "p" | "q" | "r" |
"s" | "t" | "u" | "v" | "w" | "x" | "y" | "z"

upalpha = "A" | "B" | "C" | "D" | "E" | "F" | "G" | "H" | "I" |
"J" | "K" | "L" | "M" | "N" | "O" | "P" | "Q" | "R" |
"S" | "T" | "U" | "V" | "W" | "X" | "Y" | "Z"

digit = "0" | "1" | "2" | "3" | "4" | "5" | "6" | "7" |
"8" | "9"

alphanum = alpha | digit

The complete URI syntax is collected in Appendix A.

2. URI Characters and Escape Sequences

URI consist of a restricted set of characters, primarily chosen to
aid transcribability and usability both in computer systems and in
non-computer communications. Characters used conventionally as
delimiters around URI were excluded. The restricted set of
characters consists of digits, letters, and a few graphic symbols
were chosen from those common to most of the character encodings and
input facilities available to Internet users.

uric = reserved | unreserved | escaped

Within a URI, characters are either used as delimiters, or to
represent strings of data (octets) within the delimited portions.
Octets are either represented directly by a character (using the US-
ASCII character for that octet [ASCII]) or by an escape encoding.
This representation is elaborated below.

2.1 URI and non-ASCII characters

The relationship between URI and characters has been a source of
confusion for characters that are not part of US-ASCII. To describe
the relationship, it is useful to distinguish between a "character"
(as a distinguishable semantic entity) and an "octet" (an 8-bit
byte). There are two mappings, one from URI characters to octets, and
a second from octets to original characters:

URI character sequence->octet sequence->original character sequence

A URI is represented as a sequence of characters, not as a sequence
of octets. That is because URI might be "transported" by means that
are not through a computer network, e.g., printed on paper, read over
the radio, etc.

A URI scheme may define a mapping from URI characters to octets;
whether this is done depends on the scheme. Commonly, within a
delimited component of a URI, a sequence of characters may be used to
represent a sequence of octets. For example, the character "a"
represents the octet 97 (decimal), while the character sequence "%",
"0", "a" represents the octet 10 (decimal).

There is a second translation for some resources: the sequence of
octets defined by a component of the URI is subsequently used to
represent a sequence of characters. A 'charset' defines this mapping.
There are many charsets in use in Internet protocols. For example,
UTF-8 [UTF-8] defines a mapping from sequences of octets to sequences
of characters in the repertoire of ISO 10646.

In the simplest case, the original character sequence contains only
characters that are defined in US-ASCII, and the two levels of
mapping are simple and easily invertible: each 'original character'
is represented as the octet for the US-ASCII code for it, which is,
in turn, represented as either the US-ASCII character, or else the
"%" escape sequence for that octet.

For original character sequences that contain non-ASCII characters,
however, the situation is more difficult. Internet protocols that
transmit octet sequences intended to represent character sequences
are expected to provide some way of identifying the charset used, if
there might be more than one [RFC2277]. However, there is currently
no provision within the generic URI syntax to accomplish this
identification. An individual URI scheme may require a single
charset, define a default charset, or provide a way to indicate the
charset used.

It is expected that a systematic treatment of character encoding
within URI will be developed as a future modification of this
specification.

2.2. Reserved Characters

Many URI include components consisting of or delimited by, certain
special characters. These characters are called "reserved", since
their usage within the URI component is limited to their reserved
purpose. If the data for a URI component would conflict with the
reserved purpose, then the conflicting data must be escaped before
forming the URI.

reserved = ";" | "/" | "?" | ":" | "@" | "&" | "=" | "+" |
"$" | ","

The "reserved" syntax class above refers to those characters that are
allowed within a URI, but which may not be allowed within a
particular component of the generic URI syntax; they are used as
delimiters of the components described in Section 3.

Characters in the "reserved" set are not reserved in all contexts.
The set of characters actually reserved within any given URI
component is defined by that component. In general, a character is
reserved if the semantics of the URI changes if the character is
replaced with its escaped US-ASCII encoding.

2.3. Unreserved Characters

Data characters that are allowed in a URI but do not have a reserved
purpose are called unreserved. These include upper and lower case
letters, decimal digits, and a limited set of punctuation marks and
symbols.

unreserved = alphanum | mark

mark = "-" | "_" | "." | "!" | "~" | "*" | "'" | "(" | ")"

Unreserved characters can be escaped without changing the semantics
of the URI, but this should not be done unless the URI is being used
in a context that does not allow the unescaped character to appear.

2.4. Escape Sequences

Data must be escaped if it does not have a representation using an
unreserved character; this includes data that does not correspond to
a printable character of the US-ASCII coded character set, or that
corresponds to any US-ASCII character that is disallowed, as
explained below.

2.4.1. Escaped Encoding

An escaped octet is encoded as a character triplet, consisting of the
percent character "%" followed by the two hexadecimal digits
representing the octet code. For example, "%20" is the escaped
encoding for the US-ASCII space character.

escaped = "%" hex hex
hex = digit | "A" | "B" | "C" | "D" | "E" | "F" |
"a" | "b" | "c" | "d" | "e" | "f"

2.4.2. When to Escape and Unescape

A URI is always in an "escaped" form, since escaping or unescaping a
completed URI might change its semantics. Normally, the only time
escape encodings can safely be made is when the URI is being created
from its component parts; each component may have its own set of
characters that are reserved, so only the mechanism responsible for
generating or interpreting that component can determine whether or

not escaping a character will change its semantics. Likewise, a URI
must be separated into its components before the escaped characters
within those components can be safely decoded.

In some cases, data that could be represented by an unreserved
character may appear escaped; for example, some of the unreserved
"mark" characters are automatically escaped by some systems. If the
given URI scheme defines a canonicalization algorithm, then
unreserved characters may be unescaped according to that algorithm.
For example, "%7e" is sometimes used instead of "~" in an http URL
path, but the two are equivalent for an http URL.

Because the percent "%" character always has the reserved purpose of
being the escape indicator, it must be escaped as "%25" in order to
be used as data within a URI. Implementers should be careful not to
escape or unescape the same string more than once, since unescaping
an already unescaped string might lead to misinterpreting a percent
data character as another escaped character, or vice versa in the
case of escaping an already escaped string.

2.4.3. Excluded US-ASCII Characters

Although they are disallowed within the URI syntax, we include here a
description of those US-ASCII characters that have been excluded and
the reasons for their exclusion.

The control characters in the US-ASCII coded character set are not
used within a URI, both because they are non-printable and because
they are likely to be misinterpreted by some control mechanisms.

control = <US-ASCII coded characters 00-1F and 7F hexadecimal>

The space character is excluded because significant spaces may
disappear and insignificant spaces may be introduced when URI are
transcribed or typeset or subjected to the treatment of word-
processing programs. Whitespace is also used to delimit URI in many
contexts.

space = <US-ASCII coded character 20 hexadecimal>

The angle-bracket "<" and ">" and double-quote (") characters are
excluded because they are often used as the delimiters around URI in
text documents and protocol fields. The character "#" is excluded
because it is used to delimit a URI from a fragment identifier in URI
references (Section 4). The percent character "%" is excluded because
it is used for the encoding of escaped characters.

delims = "<" | ">" | "#" | "%" | <">

Other characters are excluded because gateways and other transport
agents are known to sometimes modify such characters, or they are
used as delimiters.

unwise = "{" | "}" | "|" | "/" | "^" | "[" | "]" | "`"

Data corresponding to excluded characters must be escaped in order to
be properly represented within a URI.

3. URI Syntactic Components

The URI syntax is dependent upon the scheme. In general, absolute
URI are written as follows:

<scheme>:<scheme-specific-part>

An absolute URI contains the name of the scheme being used (<scheme>)
followed by a colon (":") and then a string (the <scheme-specific-
part>) whose interpretation depends on the scheme.

The URI syntax does not require that the scheme-specific-part have
any general structure or set of semantics which is common among all
URI. However, a subset of URI do share a common syntax for
representing hierarchical relationships within the namespace. This
"generic URI" syntax consists of a sequence of four main components:

<scheme>://<authority><path>?<query>

each of which, except <scheme>, may be absent from a particular URI.
For example, some URI schemes do not allow an <authority> component,
and others do not use a <query> component.

absoluteURI = scheme ":" ( hier_part | opaque_part )

URI that are hierarchical in nature use the slash "/" character for
separating hierarchical components. For some file systems, a "/"
character (used to denote the hierarchical structure of a URI) is the
delimiter used to construct a file name hierarchy, and thus the URI
path will look similar to a file pathname. This does NOT imply that
the resource is a file or that the URI maps to an actual filesystem
pathname.

hier_part = ( net_path | abs_path ) [ "?" query ]

net_path = "//" authority [ abs_path ]

abs_path = "/" path_segments

URI that do not make use of the slash "/" character for separating
hierarchical components are considered opaque by the generic URI
parser.

opaque_part = uric_no_slash *uric

uric_no_slash = unreserved | escaped | ";" | "?" | ":" | "@" |
"&" | "=" | "+" | "$" | ","

We use the term <path> to refer to both the <abs_path> and
<opaque_part> constructs, since they are mutually exclusive for any
given URI and can be parsed as a single component.

3.1. Scheme Component

Just as there are many different methods of access to resources,
there are a variety of schemes for identifying such resources. The
URI syntax consists of a sequence of components separated by reserved
characters, with the first component defining the semantics for the
remainder of the URI string.

Scheme names consist of a sequence of characters beginning with a
lower case letter and followed by any combination of lower case
letters, digits, plus ("+"), period ("."), or hyphen ("-"). For
resiliency, programs interpreting URI should treat upper case letters
as equivalent to lower case in scheme names (e.g., allow "HTTP" as
well as "http").

scheme = alpha *( alpha | digit | "+" | "-" | "." )

Relative URI references are distinguished from absolute URI in that
they do not begin with a scheme name. Instead, the scheme is
inherited from the base URI, as described in Section 5.2.

3.2. Authority Component

Many URI schemes include a top hierarchical element for a naming
authority, such that the namespace defined by the remainder of the
URI is governed by that authority. This authority component is
typically defined by an Internet-based server or a scheme-specific
registry of naming authorities.

authority = server | reg_name

The authority component is preceded by a double slash "//" and is
terminated by the next slash "/", question-mark "?", or by the end of
the URI. Within the authority component, the characters ";", ":",
"@", "?", and "/" are reserved.

An authority component is not required for a URI scheme to make use
of relative references. A base URI without an authority component
implies that any relative reference will also be without an authority
component.

3.2.1. Registry-based Naming Authority

The structure of a registry-based naming authority is specific to the
URI scheme, but constrained to the allowed characters for an
authority component.

reg_name = 1*( unreserved | escaped | "$" | "," |
";" | ":" | "@" | "&" | "=" | "+" )

3.2.2. Server-based Naming Authority

URL schemes that involve the direct use of an IP-based protocol to a
specified server on the Internet use a common syntax for the server
component of the URI's scheme-specific data:

<userinfo>@<host>:<port>

where <userinfo> may consist of a user name and, optionally, scheme-
specific information about how to gain authorization to access the
server. The parts "<userinfo>@" and ":<port>" may be omitted.

server = [ [ userinfo "@" ] hostport ]

The user information, if present, is followed by a commercial at-sign
"@".

userinfo = *( unreserved | escaped |
";" | ":" | "&" | "=" | "+" | "$" | "," )

Some URL schemes use the format "user:password" in the userinfo
field. This practice is NOT RECOMMENDED, because the passing of
authentication information in clear text (such as URI) has proven to
be a security risk in almost every case where it has been used.

The host is a domain name of a network host, or its IPv4 address as a
set of four decimal digit groups separated by ".". Literal IPv6
addresses are not supported.

hostport = host [ ":" port ]
host = hostname | IPv4address
hostname = *( domainlabel "." ) toplabel [ "." ]
domainlabel = alphanum | alphanum *( alphanum | "-" ) alphanum
toplabel = alpha | alpha *( alphanum | "-" ) alphanum

IPv4address = 1*digit "." 1*digit "." 1*digit "." 1*digit
port = *digit

Hostnames take the form described in Section 3 of [RFC1034] and
Section 2.1 of [RFC1123]: a sequence of domain labels separated by
".", each domain label starting and ending with an alphanumeric
character and possibly also containing "-" characters. The rightmost
domain label of a fully qualified domain name will never start with a
digit, thus syntactically distinguishing domain names from IPv4
addresses, and may be followed by a single "." if it is necessary to
distinguish between the complete domain name and any local domain.
To actually be "Uniform" as a resource locator, a URL hostname should
be a fully qualified domain name. In practice, however, the host
component may be a local domain literal.

Note: A suitable representation for including a literal IPv6
address as the host part of a URL is desired, but has not yet been
determined or implemented in practice.

The port is the network port number for the server. Most schemes
designate protocols that have a default port number. Another port
number may optionally be supplied, in decimal, separated from the
host by a colon. If the port is omitted, the default port number is
assumed.

3.3. Path Component

The path component contains data, specific to the authority (or the
scheme if there is no authority component), identifying the resource
within the scope of that scheme and authority.

path = [ abs_path | opaque_part ]

path_segments = segment *( "/" segment )
segment = *pchar *( ";" param )
param = *pchar

pchar = unreserved | escaped |
":" | "@" | "&" | "=" | "+" | "$" | ","

The path may consist of a sequence of path segments separated by a
single slash "/" character. Within a path segment, the characters
"/", ";", "=", and "?" are reserved. Each path segment may include a
sequence of parameters, indicated by the semicolon ";" character.
The parameters are not significant to the parsing of relative
references.

3.4. Query Component

The query component is a string of information to be interpreted by
the resource.

query = *uric

Within a query component, the characters ";", "/", "?", ":", "@",
"&", "=", "+", ",", and "$" are reserved.

4. URI References

The term "URI-reference" is used here to denote the common usage of a
resource identifier. A URI reference may be absolute or relative,
and may have additional information attached in the form of a
fragment identifier. However, "the URI" that results from such a
reference includes only the absolute URI after the fragment
identifier (if any) is removed and after any relative URI is resolved
to its absolute form. Although it is possible to limit the
discussion of URI syntax and semantics to that of the absolute
result, most usage of URI is within general URI references, and it is
impossible to obtain the URI from such a reference without also
parsing the fragment and resolving the relative form.

URI-reference = [ absoluteURI | relativeURI ] [ "#" fragment ]

The syntax for relative URI is a shortened form of that for absolute
URI, where some prefix of the URI is missing and certain path
components ("." and "..") have a special meaning when, and only when,
interpreting a relative path. The relative URI syntax is defined in
Section 5.

4.1. Fragment Identifier

When a URI reference is used to perform a retrieval action on the
identified resource, the optional fragment identifier, separated from
the URI by a crosshatch ("#") character, consists of additional
reference information to be interpreted by the user agent after the
retrieval action has been successfully completed. As such, it is not
part of a URI, but is often used in conjunction with a URI.

fragment = *uric

The semantics of a fragment identifier is a property of the data
resulting from a retrieval action, regardless of the type of URI used
in the reference. Therefore, the format and interpretation of
fragment identifiers is dependent on the media type [RFC2046] of the
retrieval result. The character restrictions described in Section 2

for URI also apply to the fragment in a URI-reference. Individual
media types may define additional restrictions or structure within
the fragment for specifying different types of "partial views" that
can be identified within that media type.

A fragment identifier is only meaningful when a URI reference is
intended for retrieval and the result of that retrieval is a document
for which the identified fragment is consistently defined.

4.2. Same-document References

A URI reference that does not contain a URI is a reference to the
current document. In other words, an empty URI reference within a
document is interpreted as a reference to the start of that document,
and a reference containing only a fragment identifier is a reference
to the identified fragment of that document. Traversal of such a
reference should not result in an additional retrieval action.
However, if the URI reference occurs in a context that is always
intended to result in a new request, as in the case of HTML's FORM
element, then an empty URI reference represents the base URI of the
current document and should be replaced by that URI when transformed
into a request.

4.3. Parsing a URI Reference

A URI reference is typically parsed according to the four main
components and fragment identifier in order to determine what
components are present and whether the reference is relative or
absolute. The individual components are then parsed for their
subparts and, if not opaque, to verify their validity.

Although the BNF defines what is allowed in each component, it is
ambiguous in terms of differentiating between an authority component
and a path component that begins with two slash characters. The
greedy algorithm is used for disambiguation: the left-most matching
rule soaks up as much of the URI reference string as it is capable of
matching. In other words, the authority component wins.

Readers familiar with regular expressions should see Appendix B for a
concrete parsing example and test oracle.

5. Relative URI References

It is often the case that a group or "tree" of documents has been
constructed to serve a common purpose; the vast majority of URI in
these documents point to resources within the tree rather than

outside of it. Similarly, documents located at a particular site are
much more likely to refer to other resources at that site than to
resources at remote sites.

Relative addressing of URI allows document trees to be partially
independent of their location and access scheme. For instance, it is
possible for a single set of hypertext documents to be simultaneously
accessible and traversable via each of the "file", "http", and "ftp"
schemes if the documents refer to each other using relative URI.
Furthermore, such document trees can be moved, as a whole, without
changing any of the relative references. Experience within the WWW
has demonstrated that the ability to perform relative referencing is
necessary for the long-term usability of embedded URI.

The syntax for relative URI takes advantage of the <hier_part> syntax
of <absoluteURI> (Section 3) in order to express a reference that is
relative to the namespace of another hierarchical URI.

relativeURI = ( net_path | abs_path | rel_path ) [ "?" query ]

A relative reference beginning with two slash characters is termed a
network-path reference, as defined by <net_path> in Section 3. Such
references are rarely used.

A relative reference beginning with a single slash character is
termed an absolute-path reference, as defined by <abs_path> in
Section 3.

A relative reference that does not begin with a scheme name or a
slash character is termed a relative-path reference.

rel_path = rel_segment [ abs_path ]

rel_segment = 1*( unreserved | escaped |
";" | "@" | "&" | "=" | "+" | "$" | "," )

Within a relative-path reference, the complete path segments "." and
".." have special meanings: "the current hierarchy level" and "the
level above this hierarchy level", respectively. Although this is
very similar to their use within Unix-based filesystems to indicate
directory levels, these path components are only considered special
when resolving a relative-path reference to its absolute form
(Section 5.2).

Authors should be aware that a path segment which contains a colon
character cannot be used as the first segment of a relative URI path
(e.g., "this:that"), because it would be mistaken for a scheme name.

It is therefore necessary to precede such segments with other
segments (e.g., "./this:that") in order for them to be referenced as
a relative path.

It is not necessary for all URI within a given scheme to be
restricted to the <hier_part> syntax, since the hierarchical
properties of that syntax are only necessary when relative URI are
used within a particular document. Documents can only make use of
relative URI when their base URI fits within the <hier_part> syntax.
It is assumed that any document which contains a relative reference
will also have a base URI that obeys the syntax. In other words,
relative URI cannot be used within a document that has an unsuitable
base URI.

Some URI schemes do not allow a hierarchical syntax matching the
<hier_part> syntax, and thus cannot use relative references.

5.1. Establishing a Base URI

The term "relative URI" implies that there exists some absolute "base
URI" against which the relative reference is applied. Indeed, the
base URI is necessary to define the semantics of any relative URI
reference; without it, a relative reference is meaningless. In order
for relative URI to be usable within a document, the base URI of that
document must be known to the parser.

The base URI of a document can be established in one of four ways,
listed below in order of precedence. The order of precedence can be
thought of in terms of layers, where the innermost defined base URI
has the highest precedence. This can be visualized graphically as:

.----------------------------------------------------------.
| .----------------------------------------------------. |
| | .----------------------------------------------. | |
| | | .----------------------------------------. | | |
| | | | .----------------------------------. | | | |
| | | | | <relative_reference> | | | | |
| | | | `----------------------------------' | | | |
| | | | (5.1.1) Base URI embedded in the | | | |
| | | | document's content | | | |
| | | `----------------------------------------' | | |
| | | (5.1.2) Base URI of the encapsulating entity | | |
| | | (message, document, or none). | | |
| | `----------------------------------------------' | |
| | (5.1.3) URI used to retrieve the entity | |
| `----------------------------------------------------' |
| (5.1.4) Default Base URI is application-dependent |
`----------------------------------------------------------'

5.1.1. Base URI within Document Content

Within certain document media types, the base URI of the document can
be embedded within the content itself such that it can be readily
obtained by a parser. This can be useful for descriptive documents,
such as tables of content, which may be transmitted to others through
protocols other than their usual retrieval context (e.g., E-Mail or
USENET news).

It is beyond the scope of this document to specify how, for each
media type, the base URI can be embedded. It is assumed that user
agents manipulating such media types will be able to obtain the
appropriate syntax from that media type's specification. An example
of how the base URI can be embedded in the Hypertext Markup Language
(HTML) [RFC1866] is provided in Appendix D.

A mechanism for embedding the base URI within MIME container types
(e.g., the message and multipart types) is defined by MHTML
[RFC2110]. Protocols that do not use the MIME message header syntax,
but which do allow some form of tagged metainformation to be included
within messages, may define their own syntax for defining the base
URI as part of a message.

5.1.2. Base URI from the Encapsulating Entity

If no base URI is embedded, the base URI of a document is defined by
the document's retrieval context. For a document that is enclosed
within another entity (such as a message or another document), the
retrieval context is that entity; thus, the default base URI of the
document is the base URI of the entity in which the document is
encapsulated.

5.1.3. Base URI from the Retrieval URI

If no base URI is embedded and the document is not encapsulated
within some other entity (e.g., the top level of a composite entity),
then, if a URI was used to retrieve the base document, that URI shall
be considered the base URI. Note that if the retrieval was the
result of a redirected request, the last URI used (i.e., that which
resulted in the actual retrieval of the document) is the base URI.

5.1.4. Default Base URI

If none of the conditions described in Sections 5.1.1--5.1.3 apply,
then the base URI is defined by the context of the application.
Since this definition is necessarily application-dependent, failing

to define the base URI using one of the other methods may result in
the same content being interpreted differently by different types of
application.

It is the responsibility of the distributor(s) of a document
containing relative URI to ensure that the base URI for that document
can be established. It must be emphasized that relative URI cannot
be used reliably in situations where the document's base URI is not
well-defined.

5.2. Resolving Relative References to Absolute Form

This section describes an example algorithm for resolving URI
references that might be relative to a given base URI.

The base URI is established according to the rules of Section 5.1 and
parsed into the four main components as described in Section 3. Note
that only the scheme component is required to be present in the base
URI; the other components may be empty or undefined. A component is
undefined if its preceding separator does not appear in the URI
reference; the path component is never undefined, though it may be
empty. The base URI's query component is not used by the resolution
algorithm and may be discarded.

For each URI reference, the following steps are performed in order:

1) The URI reference is parsed into the potential four components and
fragment identifier, as described in Section 4.3.

2) If the path component is empty and the scheme, authority, and
query components are undefined, then it is a reference to the
current document and we are done. Otherwise, the reference URI's
query and fragment components are defined as found (or not found)
within the URI reference and not inherited from the base URI.

3) If the scheme component is defined, indicating that the reference
starts with a scheme name, then the reference is interpreted as an
absolute URI and we are done. Otherwise, the reference URI's
scheme is inherited from the base URI's scheme component.

Due to a loophole in prior specifications [RFC1630], some parsers
allow the scheme name to be present in a relative URI if it is the
same as the base URI scheme. Unfortunately, this can conflict
with the correct parsing of non-hierarchical URI. For backwards
compatibility, an implementation may work around such references
by removing the scheme if it matches that of the base URI and the
scheme is known to always use the <hier_part> syntax. The parser

can then continue with the steps below for the remainder of the
reference components. Validating parsers should mark such a
misformed relative reference as an error.

4) If the authority component is defined, then the reference is a
network-path and we skip to step 7. Otherwise, the reference
URI's authority is inherited from the base URI's authority
component, which will also be undefined if the URI scheme does not
use an authority component.

5) If the path component begins with a slash character ("/"), then
the reference is an absolute-path and we skip to step 7.

6) If this step is reached, then we are resolving a relative-path
reference. The relative path needs to be merged with the base
URI's path. Although there are many ways to do this, we will
describe a simple method using a separate string buffer.

a) All but the last segment of the base URI's path component is
copied to the buffer. In other words, any characters after the
last (right-most) slash character, if any, are excluded.

b) The reference's path component is appended to the buffer
string.

c) All occurrences of "./", where "." is a complete path segment,
are removed from the buffer string.

d) If the buffer string ends with "." as a complete path segment,
that "." is removed.

e) All occurrences of "<segment>/../", where <segment> is a
complete path segment not equal to "..", are removed from the
buffer string. Removal of these path segments is performed
iteratively, removing the leftmost matching pattern on each
iteration, until no matching pattern remains.

f) If the buffer string ends with "<segment>/..", where <segment>
is a complete path segment not equal to "..", that
"<segment>/.." is removed.

g) If the resulting buffer string still begins with one or more
complete path segments of "..", then the reference is
considered to be in error. Implementations may handle this
error by retaining these components in the resolved path (i.e.,
treating them as part of the final URI), by removing them from
the resolved path (i.e., discarding relative levels above the
root), or by avoiding traversal of the reference.

h) The remaining buffer string is the reference URI's new path
component.

7) The resulting URI components, including any inherited from the
base URI, are recombined to give the absolute form of the URI
reference. Using pseudocode, this would be

result = ""

if scheme is defined then
append scheme to result
append ":" to result

if authority is defined then
append "//" to result
append authority to result

append path to result

if query is defined then
append "?" to result
append query to result

if fragment is defined then
append "#" to result
append fragment to result

return result

Note that we must be careful to preserve the distinction between a
component that is undefined, meaning that its separator was not
present in the reference, and a component that is empty, meaning
that the separator was present and was immediately followed by the
next component separator or the end of the reference.

The above algorithm is intended to provide an example by which the
output of implementations can be tested -- implementation of the
algorithm itself is not required. For example, some systems may find
it more efficient to implement step 6 as a pair of segment stacks
being merged, rather than as a series of string pattern replacements.

Note: Some WWW client applications will fail to separate the
reference's query component from its path component before merging
the base and reference paths in step 6 above. This may result in
a loss of information if the query component contains the strings
"/../" or "/./".

Resolution examples are provided in Appendix C.

6. URI Normalization and Equivalence

In many cases, different URI strings may actually identify the
identical resource. For example, the host names used in URL are
actually case insensitive, and the URL <http://www.XEROX.com> is
equivalent to <http://www.xerox.com>. In general, the rules for
equivalence and definition of a normal form, if any, are scheme
dependent. When a scheme uses elements of the common syntax, it will
also use the common syntax equivalence rules, namely that the scheme
and hostname are case insensitive and a URL with an explicit ":port",
where the port is the default for the scheme, is equivalent to one
where the port is elided.

7. Security Considerations

A URI does not in itself pose a security threat. Users should beware
that there is no general guarantee that a URL, which at one time
located a given resource, will continue to do so. Nor is there any
guarantee that a URL will not locate a different resource at some
later point in time, due to the lack of any constraint on how a given
authority apportions its namespace. Such a guarantee can only be
obtained from the person(s) controlling that namespace and the
resource in question. A specific URI scheme may include additional
semantics, such as name persistence, if those semantics are required
of all naming authorities for that scheme.

It is sometimes possible to construct a URL such that an attempt to
perform a seemingly harmless, idempotent operation, such as the
retrieval of an entity associated with the resource, will in fact
cause a possibly damaging remote operation to occur. The unsafe URL
is typically constructed by specifying a port number other than that
reserved for the network protocol in question. The client
unwittingly contacts a site that is in fact running a different
protocol. The content of the URL contains instructions that, when
interpreted according to this other protocol, cause an unexpected
operation. An example has been the use of a gopher URL to cause an
unintended or impersonating message to be sent via a SMTP server.

Caution should be used when using any URL that specifies a port
number other than the default for the protocol, especially when it is
a number within the reserved space.

Care should be taken when a URL contains escaped delimiters for a
given protocol (for example, CR and LF characters for telnet
protocols) that these are not unescaped before transmission. This
might violate the protocol, but avoids the potential for such

characters to be used to simulate an extra operation or parameter in
that protocol, which might lead to an unexpected and possibly harmful
remote operation to be performed.

It is clearly unwise to use a URL that contains a password which is
intended to be secret. In particular, the use of a password within
the 'userinfo' component of a URL is strongly disrecommended except
in those rare cases where the 'password' parameter is intended to be
public.

8. Acknowledgements

This document was derived from RFC1738 [RFC1738] and RFC1808
[RFC1808]; the acknowledgements in those specifications still apply.
In addition, contributions by Gisle Aas, Martin Beet, Martin Duerst,
Jim Gettys, Martijn Koster, Dave Kristol, Daniel LaLiberte, Foteos
Macrides, James Marshall, Ryan Moats, Keith Moore, and Lauren Wood
are gratefully acknowledged.

9. References

[RFC2277] Alvestrand, H., "IETF Policy on Character Sets and
Languages", BCP 18, RFC2277, January 1998.

[RFC1630] Berners-Lee, T., "Universal Resource Identifiers in WWW: A
Unifying Syntax for the Expression of Names and Addresses
of Objects on the Network as used in the World-Wide Web",
RFC1630, June 1994.

[RFC1738] Berners-Lee, T., Masinter, L., and M. McCahill, Editors,
"Uniform Resource Locators (URL)", RFC1738, December 1994.

[RFC1866] Berners-Lee T., and D. Connolly, "HyperText Markup Language
Specification -- 2.0", RFC1866, November 1995.

[RFC1123] Braden, R., Editor, "Requirements for Internet Hosts --
Application and Support", STD 3, RFC1123, October 1989.

[RFC822] Crocker, D., "Standard for the Format of ARPA Internet Text
Messages", STD 11, RFC822, August 1982.

[RFC1808] Fielding, R., "Relative Uniform Resource Locators", RFC
1808, June 1995.

[RFC2046] Freed, N., and N. Borenstein, "Multipurpose Internet Mail
Extensions (MIME) Part Two: Media Types", RFC2046,
November 1996.

[RFC1736] Kunze, J., "Functional Recommendations for Internet
Resource Locators", RFC1736, February 1995.

[RFC2141] Moats, R., "URN Syntax", RFC2141, May 1997.

[RFC1034] Mockapetris, P., "Domain Names - Concepts and Facilities",
STD 13, RFC1034, November 1987.

[RFC2110] Palme, J., and A. Hopmann, "MIME E-mail Encapsulation of
Aggregate Documents, such as HTML (MHTML)", RFC2110, March
1997.

[RFC1737] Sollins, K., and L. Masinter, "Functional Requirements for
Uniform Resource Names", RFC1737, December 1994.

[ASCII] US-ASCII. "Coded Character Set -- 7-bit American Standard
Code for Information Interchange", ANSI X3.4-1986.

[UTF-8] Yergeau, F., "UTF-8, a transformation format of ISO 10646",
RFC2279, January 1998.

10. Authors' Addresses

Tim Berners-Lee
World Wide Web Consortium
MIT Laboratory for Computer Science, NE43-356
545 Technology Square
Cambridge, MA 02139

Fax: +1(617)258-8682
EMail: [email protected]

Roy T. Fielding
Department of Information and Computer Science
University of California, Irvine
Irvine, CA 92697-3425

Fax: +1(949)824-1715
EMail: [email protected]

Larry Masinter
Xerox PARC
3333 Coyote Hill Road
Palo Alto, CA 94034

Fax: +1(415)812-4333
EMail: [email protected]

A. Collected BNF for URI

URI-reference = [ absoluteURI | relativeURI ] [ "#" fragment ]
absoluteURI = scheme ":" ( hier_part | opaque_part )
relativeURI = ( net_path | abs_path | rel_path ) [ "?" query ]

hier_part = ( net_path | abs_path ) [ "?" query ]
opaque_part = uric_no_slash *uric

uric_no_slash = unreserved | escaped | ";" | "?" | ":" | "@" |
"&" | "=" | "+" | "$" | ","

net_path = "//" authority [ abs_path ]
abs_path = "/" path_segments
rel_path = rel_segment [ abs_path ]

rel_segment = 1*( unreserved | escaped |
";" | "@" | "&" | "=" | "+" | "$" | "," )

scheme = alpha *( alpha | digit | "+" | "-" | "." )

authority = server | reg_name

reg_name = 1*( unreserved | escaped | "$" | "," |
";" | ":" | "@" | "&" | "=" | "+" )

server = [ [ userinfo "@" ] hostport ]
userinfo = *( unreserved | escaped |
";" | ":" | "&" | "=" | "+" | "$" | "," )

hostport = host [ ":" port ]
host = hostname | IPv4address
hostname = *( domainlabel "." ) toplabel [ "." ]
domainlabel = alphanum | alphanum *( alphanum | "-" ) alphanum
toplabel = alpha | alpha *( alphanum | "-" ) alphanum
IPv4address = 1*digit "." 1*digit "." 1*digit "." 1*digit
port = *digit

path = [ abs_path | opaque_part ]
path_segments = segment *( "/" segment )
segment = *pchar *( ";" param )
param = *pchar
pchar = unreserved | escaped |
":" | "@" | "&" | "=" | "+" | "$" | ","

query = *uric

fragment = *uric

uric = reserved | unreserved | escaped
reserved = ";" | "/" | "?" | ":" | "@" | "&" | "=" | "+" |
"$" | ","
unreserved = alphanum | mark
mark = "-" | "_" | "." | "!" | "~" | "*" | "'" |
"(" | ")"

escaped = "%" hex hex
hex = digit | "A" | "B" | "C" | "D" | "E" | "F" |
"a" | "b" | "c" | "d" | "e" | "f"

alphanum = alpha | digit
alpha = lowalpha | upalpha

lowalpha = "a" | "b" | "c" | "d" | "e" | "f" | "g" | "h" | "i" |
"j" | "k" | "l" | "m" | "n" | "o" | "p" | "q" | "r" |
"s" | "t" | "u" | "v" | "w" | "x" | "y" | "z"
upalpha = "A" | "B" | "C" | "D" | "E" | "F" | "G" | "H" | "I" |
"J" | "K" | "L" | "M" | "N" | "O" | "P" | "Q" | "R" |
"S" | "T" | "U" | "V" | "W" | "X" | "Y" | "Z"
digit = "0" | "1" | "2" | "3" | "4" | "5" | "6" | "7" |
"8" | "9"

B. Parsing a URI Reference with a Regular Expression

As described in Section 4.3, the generic URI syntax is not sufficient
to disambiguate the components of some forms of URI. Since the
"greedy algorithm" described in that section is identical to the
disambiguation method used by POSIX regular expressions, it is
natural and commonplace to use a regular expression for parsing the
potential four components and fragment identifier of a URI reference.

The following line is the regular expression for breaking-down a URI
reference into its components.

^(([^:/?#]+):)?(//([^/?#]*))?([^?#]*)(/?([^#]*))?(#(.*))?
12 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

The numbers in the second line above are only to assist readability;
they indicate the reference points for each subexpression (i.e., each
paired parenthesis). We refer to the value matched for subexpression
<n> as $<n>. For example, matching the above expression to

http://www.ics.uci.edu/pub/ietf/uri/#Related

results in the following subexpression matches:

$1 = http:
$2 = http
$3 = //www.ics.uci.edu
$4 = www.ics.uci.edu
$5 = /pub/ietf/uri/
$6 = <undefined>
$7 = <undefined>
$8 = #Related
$9 = Related

where <undefined> indicates that the component is not present, as is
the case for the query component in the above example. Therefore, we
can determine the value of the four components and fragment as

scheme = $2
authority = $4
path = $5
query = $7
fragment = $9

and, going in the opposite direction, we can recreate a URI reference
from its components using the algorithm in step 7 of Section 5.2.

C. Examples of Resolving Relative URI References

Within an object with a well-defined base URI of

http://a/b/c/d;p?q

the relative URI would be resolved as follows:

C.1. Normal Examples

g:h = g:h
g = http://a/b/c/g
./g = http://a/b/c/g
g/ = http://a/b/c/g/
/g = http://a/g
//g = http://g
?y = http://a/b/c/?y
g?y = http://a/b/c/g?y
#s = (current document)#s
g#s = http://a/b/c/g#s
g?y#s = http://a/b/c/g?y#s
;x = http://a/b/c/;x
g;x = http://a/b/c/g;x
g;x?y#s = http://a/b/c/g;x?y#s
. = http://a/b/c/
./ = http://a/b/c/
.. = http://a/b/
../ = http://a/b/
../g = http://a/b/g
../.. = http://a/
../../ = http://a/
../../g = http://a/g

C.2. Abnormal Examples

Although the following abnormal examples are unlikely to occur in
normal practice, all URI parsers should be capable of resolving them
consistently. Each example uses the same base as above.

An empty reference refers to the start of the current document.

<> = (current document)

Parsers must be careful in handling the case where there are more
relative path ".." segments than there are hierarchical levels in the
base URI's path. Note that the ".." syntax cannot be used to change
the authority component of a URI.

../../../g = http://a/../g
../../../../g = http://a/../../g

In practice, some implementations strip leading relative symbolic
elements (".", "..") after applying a relative URI calculation, based
on the theory that compensating for obvious author errors is better
than allowing the request to fail. Thus, the above two references
will be interpreted as "http://a/g" by some implementations.

Similarly, parsers must avoid treating "." and ".." as special when
they are not complete components of a relative path.

/./g = http://a/./g
/../g = http://a/../g
g. = http://a/b/c/g.
.g = http://a/b/c/.g
g.. = http://a/b/c/g..
..g = http://a/b/c/..g

Less likely are cases where the relative URI uses unnecessary or
nonsensical forms of the "." and ".." complete path segments.

./../g = http://a/b/g
./g/. = http://a/b/c/g/
g/./h = http://a/b/c/g/h
g/../h = http://a/b/c/h
g;x=1/./y = http://a/b/c/g;x=1/y
g;x=1/../y = http://a/b/c/y

All client applications remove the query component from the base URI
before resolving relative URI. However, some applications fail to
separate the reference's query and/or fragment components from a
relative path before merging it with the base path. This error is
rarely noticed, since typical usage of a fragment never includes the
hierarchy ("/") character, and the query component is not normally
used within relative references.

g?y/./x = http://a/b/c/g?y/./x
g?y/../x = http://a/b/c/g?y/../x
g#s/./x = http://a/b/c/g#s/./x
g#s/../x = http://a/b/c/g#s/../x

Some parsers allow the scheme name to be present in a relative URI if
it is the same as the base URI scheme. This is considered to be a
loophole in prior specifications of partial URI [RFC1630]. Its use
should be avoided.

http:g = http:g ; for validating parsers
| http://a/b/c/g ; for backwards compatibility

D. Embedding the Base URI in HTML documents

It is useful to consider an example of how the base URI of a document
can be embedded within the document's content. In this appendix, we
describe how documents written in the Hypertext Markup Language
(HTML) [RFC1866] can include an embedded base URI. This appendix
does not form a part of the URI specification and should not be
considered as anything more than a descriptive example.

HTML defines a special element "BASE" which, when present in the
"HEAD" portion of a document, signals that the parser should use the
BASE element's "HREF" attribute as the base URI for resolving any
relative URI. The "HREF" attribute must be an absolute URI. Note
that, in HTML, element and attribute names are case-insensitive. For
example:

<!doctype html public "-//IETF//DTD HTML//EN">
<HTML><HEAD>
<TITLE>An example HTML document</TITLE>
<BASE href="http://www.ics.uci.edu/Test/a/b/c">
</HEAD><BODY>
... <A href="../x">a hypertext anchor</A> ...
</BODY></HTML>

A parser reading the example document should interpret the given
relative URI "../x" as representing the absolute URI

<http://www.ics.uci.edu/Test/a/x>

regardless of the context in which the example document was obtained.

E. Recommendations for Delimiting URI in Context

URI are often transmitted through formats that do not provide a clear
context for their interpretation. For example, there are many
occasions when URI are included in plain text; examples include text
sent in electronic mail, USENET news messages, and, most importantly,
printed on paper. In such cases, it is important to be able to
delimit the URI from the rest of the text, and in particular from
punctuation marks that might be mistaken for part of the URI.

In practice, URI are delimited in a variety of ways, but usually
within double-quotes "http://test.com/", angle brackets
<http://test.com/>, or just using whitespace

http://test.com/

These wrappers do not form part of the URI.

In the case where a fragment identifier is associated with a URI
reference, the fragment would be placed within the brackets as well
(separated from the URI with a "#" character).

In some cases, extra whitespace (spaces, linebreaks, tabs, etc.) may
need to be added to break long URI across lines. The whitespace
should be ignored when extracting the URI.

No whitespace should be introduced after a hyphen ("-") character.
Because some typesetters and printers may (erroneously) introduce a
hyphen at the end of line when breaking a line, the interpreter of a
URI containing a line break immediately after a hyphen should ignore
all unescaped whitespace around the line break, and should be aware
that the hyphen may or may not actually be part of the URI.

Using <> angle brackets around each URI is especially recommended as
a delimiting style for URI that contain whitespace.

The prefix "URL:" (with or without a trailing space) was recommended
as a way to used to help distinguish a URL from other bracketed
designators, although this is not common in practice.

For robustness, software that accepts user-typed URI should attempt
to recognize and strip both delimiters and embedded whitespace.

For example, the text:

Yes, Jim, I found it under "http://www.w3.org/Addressing/",
but you can probably pick it up from <ftp://ds.internic.
net/rfc/>. Note the warning in <http://www.ics.uci.edu/pub/
ietf/uri/historical.html#WARNING>.

contains the URI references

http://www.w3.org/Addressing/
ftp://ds.internic.net/rfc/
http://www.ics.uci.edu/pub/ietf/uri/historical.html#WARNING

F. Abbreviated URLs

The URL syntax was designed for unambiguous reference to network
resources and extensibility via the URL scheme. However, as URL
identification and usage have become commonplace, traditional media
(television, radio, newspapers, billboards, etc.) have increasingly
used abbreviated URL references. That is, a reference consisting of
only the authority and path portions of the identified resource, such
as

www.w3.org/Addressing/

or simply the DNS hostname on its own. Such references are primarily
intended for human interpretation rather than machine, with the
assumption that context-based heuristics are sufficient to complete
the URL (e.g., most hostnames beginning with "www" are likely to have
a URL prefix of "http://"). Although there is no standard set of
heuristics for disambiguating abbreviated URL references, many client
implementations allow them to be entered by the user and
heuristically resolved. It should be noted that such heuristics may
change over time, particularly when new URL schemes are introduced.

Since an abbreviated URL has the same syntax as a relative URL path,
abbreviated URL references cannot be used in contexts where relative
URLs are expected. This limits the use of abbreviated URLs to places
where there is no defined base URL, such as dialog boxes and off-line
advertisements.

G. Summary of Non-editorial Changes

G.1. Additions

Section 4 (URI References) was added to stem the confusion regarding
"what is a URI" and how to describe fragment identifiers given that
they are not part of the URI, but are part of the URI syntax and
parsing concerns. In addition, it provides a reference definition
for use by other IETF specifications (HTML, HTTP, etc.) that have
previously attempted to redefine the URI syntax in order to account
for the presence of fragment identifiers in URI references.

Section 2.4 was rewritten to clarify a number of misinterpretations
and to leave room for fully internationalized URI.

Appendix F on abbreviated URLs was added to describe the shortened
references often seen on television and magazine advertisements and
explain why they are not used in other contexts.

G.2. Modifications from both RFC1738 and RFC1808

Changed to URI syntax instead of just URL.

Confusion regarding the terms "character encoding", the URI
"character set", and the escaping of characters with %<hex><hex>
equivalents has (hopefully) been reduced. Many of the BNF rule names
regarding the character sets have been changed to more accurately
describe their purpose and to encompass all "characters" rather than
just US-ASCII octets. Unless otherwise noted here, these
modifications do not affect the URI syntax.

Both RFC1738 and RFC1808 refer to the "reserved" set of characters
as if URI-interpreting software were limited to a single set of
characters with a reserved purpose (i.e., as meaning something other
than the data to which the characters correspond), and that this set
was fixed by the URI scheme. However, this has not been true in
practice; any character that is interpreted differently when it is
escaped is, in effect, reserved. Furthermore, the interpreting
engine on a HTTP server is often dependent on the resource, not just
the URI scheme. The description of reserved characters has been
changed accordingly.

The plus "+", dollar "$", and comma "," characters have been added to
those in the "reserved" set, since they are treated as reserved
within the query component.

The tilde "~" character was added to those in the "unreserved" set,
since it is extensively used on the Internet in spite of the
difficulty to transcribe it with some keyboards.

The syntax for URI scheme has been changed to require that all
schemes begin with an alpha character.

The "user:password" form in the previous BNF was changed to a
"userinfo" token, and the possibility that it might be
"user:password" made scheme specific. In particular, the use of
passwords in the clear is not even suggested by the syntax.

The question-mark "?" character was removed from the set of allowed
characters for the userinfo in the authority component, since testing
showed that many applications treat it as reserved for separating the
query component from the rest of the URI.

The semicolon ";" character was added to those stated as being
reserved within the authority component, since several new schemes
are using it as a separator within userinfo to indicate the type of
user authentication.

RFC1738 specified that the path was separated from the authority
portion of a URI by a slash. RFC1808 followed suit, but with a
fudge of carrying around the separator as a "prefix" in order to
describe the parsing algorithm. RFC1630 never had this problem,
since it considered the slash to be part of the path. In writing
this specification, it was found to be impossible to accurately
describe and retain the difference between the two URI
<foo:/bar> and <foo:bar>
without either considering the slash to be part of the path (as
corresponds to actual practice) or creating a separate component just
to hold that slash. We chose the former.

G.3. Modifications from RFC1738

The definition of specific URL schemes and their scheme-specific
syntax and semantics has been moved to separate documents.

The URL host was defined as a fully-qualified domain name. However,
many URLs are used without fully-qualified domain names (in contexts
for which the full qualification is not necessary), without any host
(as in some file URLs), or with a host of "localhost".

The URL port is now *digit instead of 1*digit, since systems are
expected to handle the case where the ":" separator between host and
port is supplied without a port.

The recommendations for delimiting URI in context (Appendix E) have
been adjusted to reflect current practice.

G.4. Modifications from RFC1808

RFC1808 (Section 4) defined an empty URL reference (a reference
containing nothing aside from the fragment identifier) as being a
reference to the base URL. Unfortunately, that definition could be
interpreted, upon selection of such a reference, as a new retrieval
action on that resource. Since the normal intent of such references
is for the user agent to change its view of the current document to
the beginning of the specified fragment within that document, not to
make an additional request of the resource, a description of how to
correctly interpret an empty reference has been added in Section 4.

The description of the mythical Base header field has been replaced
with a reference to the Content-Location header field defined by
MHTML [RFC2110].

RFC1808 described various schemes as either having or not having the
properties of the generic URI syntax. However, the only requirement
is that the particular document containing the relative references
have a base URI that abides by the generic URI syntax, regardless of
the URI scheme, so the associated description has been updated to
reflect that.

The BNF term <net_loc> has been replaced with <authority>, since the
latter more accurately describes its use and purpose. Likewise, the
authority is no longer restricted to the IP server syntax.

Extensive testing of current client applications demonstrated that
the majority of deployed systems do not use the ";" character to
indicate trailing parameter information, and that the presence of a
semicolon in a path segment does not affect the relative parsing of
that segment. Therefore, parameters have been removed as a separate
component and may now appear in any path segment. Their influence
has been removed from the algorithm for resolving a relative URI
reference. The resolution examples in Appendix C have been modified
to reflect this change.

Implementations are now allowed to work around misformed relative
references that are prefixed by the same scheme as the base URI, but
only for schemes known to use the <hier_part> syntax.

H. Full Copyright Statement

Copyright (C) The Internet Society (1998). All Rights Reserved.

This document and translations of it may be copied and furnished to
others, and derivative works that comment on or otherwise explain it
or assist in its implementation may be prepared, copied, published
and distributed, in whole or in part, without restriction of any
kind, provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph are
included on all such copies and derivative works. However, this
document itself may not be modified in any way, such as by removing
the copyright notice or references to the Internet Society or other
Internet organizations, except as needed for the purpose of
developing Internet standards in which case the procedures for
copyrights defined in the Internet Standards process must be
followed, or as required to translate it into languages other than
English.

The limited permissions granted above are perpetual and will not be
revoked by the Internet Society or its successors or assigns.

This document and the information contained herein is provided on an
"AS IS" basis and THE INTERNET SOCIETY AND THE INTERNET ENGINEERING
TASK FORCE DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING
BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANY WARRANTY THAT THE USE OF THE INFORMATION
HEREIN WILL NOT INFRINGE ANY RIGHTS OR ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF
MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE