What\’s a URL?
Uniform Resource Locator is what URL stands for. It is a website address. The words (javatpoint.com) or an Internet Protocol (IP) address (195.201.68.81) can be part of a URL. But most people use URLs with words instead of numbers because it\’s easier to remember.
How to write a URL:
scheme:/prefix.domain:port/path/filename
Here,
- The scheme is used to tell what kind of Internet service it is (most common is http or https).
- the prefix is a domain\’s name is given by its prefix (default for http is www).
- The domain is used to describe the name of an Internet site (like javaTpoint.com).
- Port tells the host what port number to use (default for http is 80).
- The path is used to tell the server what a path is (If omitted: the root directory of the site).
- The name of a document or resource is set by its filename.
Here is a list of some of the most common URL schemes:
- http: Common web pages that use the HyperText Transfer Protocol. Not a secret.
- https (Secure HyperText Transfer Protocol):Secure web pages. Encrypted.
- File Transfer Protocol, or ftp, is a way to download or upload files.
- file: A file on your computer.
URL Encoding
URL encoding is used to turn non-ASCII characters into a format that can be used over the Internet, since a URL is only sent over the Internet using the ASCII character set. If a URL contains characters outside the ASCII set, the URL has to be converted.
- In URL encoding, the non-ASCII characters are replaced with a \”%\” followed by hexadecimal digits.
- URLs cannot contain spaces. URL encoding normally replaces a space with a plus (+) sign, or %20.
Following is a list of some character sets which are encoded by browser after submitting the text.
Character | From Windows-1252 | From UTF-8 |
---|---|---|
€ | %80 | %E2%82%AC |
£ | %A3 | %C2%A3 |
© | %A9 | %C2%A9 |
® | %AE | %C2%AE |
À | %C0 | %C3%80 |
Á | %C1 | %C3%81 |
 | %C2 | %C3%82 |
à | %C3 | %C3%83 |
Ä | %C4 | %C3%84 |
Å | %C5 | %C3%85 |