Absolute urls, relative urls, and...?

url terminology relative-url
MiniQuark picture MiniQuark · May 24, 2009 · Viewed 9.7k times · Source

I am writing some documentation and I have a little vocabulary problem:

  1. http://www.example.com/en/public/img/logo.gif is called an "absolute" url, right?
  2. ../../public/img/logo.gif is called a "relative" url, right?
  3. so how do you call this: /en/public/img/logo.gif ?

Is it also considered an "absolute url", although without the protocol and domain parts?

Or is it considered a relative url, but relative to the root of the domain?

I googled a bit and some people categorize this as absolute, and others as relative.

What should I call it? A "semi-absolute url"? Or "semi-relative"? Is there another word?

Answer

Gumbo picture Gumbo · May 24, 2009

Here are the URL components:

http://www.example.com/en/public/img/logo.gif
\__/   \_____________/\_____________________/
 #1     #2             #3
  1. scheme/protocol
  2. host
  3. path

A URL is called an absolute URL if it begins with the scheme and scheme specific part (here // after http:). Anything else is a relative URL.

A URL path is called an absolute URL path if it begins with a /. Any other URL path is called a relative URL path.

Thus:

  • http://www.example.com/en/public/img/logo.gif is a absolute URL,
  • ../../public/img/logo.gif is a relative URL with a relative URL path and
  • /en/public/img/logo.gif is a relative URL with an absolute URL path.

Note: The current definition of URI (RFC 3986) is different from the old URL definition (RFC 1738 and RFC 1808).

The three examples with URI terms:

  • http://www.example.com/en/public/img/logo.gif is a URI,
  • ../../public/img/logo.gif is a relative reference with just a relative path and
  • /en/public/img/logo.gif is a relative reference with just an absolute path.

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