HTML Uniform Resource Locators
A URL is another word for a web address.
A URL can be composed of words (w3schools.com), or an Internet Protocol (IP) address (192.68.20.50).
Most people enter the name when surfing, because names are easier to remember than numbers.
URL - Uniform Resource Locator
Web browsers request pages from web servers by using a URL.
When you click on a link in an HTML page, an underlying <a> tag points to an address on the web.
A Uniform Resource Locator (URL) is used to address a document (or other data) on the web.
A web address, like http://www.w3schools.com/html/default.asp follows these syntax rules:
scheme://prefix.domain:port/path/filename
Explanation:
- scheme - defines the type of Internet service (most common is http)
- prefix - defines a domain prefix (default for http is www)
- domain - defines the Internet domain name (w3schools.com)
- port - defines the port number at the host (default for http is 80)
- path - defines a path at the server (If omitted: the root directory of the site)
- filename - defines the name of a document or resource
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Password protected sites might use https and/or a username and password like: https://username:password@www.w3schools.com/html/default.asp |
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Common URL Schemes
The table below lists some common schemes:
| Scheme | Short for | Used for |
|---|---|---|
| http | HyperText Transfer Protocol | Common web pages. Not encrypted |
| https | Secure HyperText Transfer Protocol | Secure web pages. Encrypted |
| ftp | File Transfer Protocol | Downloading or uploading files |
| file | A file on your computer |
URL Encoding
URLs can only be sent over the Internet using the ASCII character-set. If a URL contains characters outside the ASCII set, the URL has to be converted.
URL encoding converts non-ASCII characters into a format that can be transmitted over the Internet.
URL encoding replaces non-ASCII characters with a "%" followed by hexadecimal digits.
URLs cannot contain spaces. URL encoding normally replaces a space with a plus (+) sign, or %20.
Try It Yourself
If you click "Submit", the browser will URL encode the input before it is sent to the server.
A page at the server will display the received input.
Try some other input and click Submit again.
ASCII Encoding Examples
Your browser will encode input, according to the character-set used in your page.
The default character-set in HTML5 is UTF-8.
| 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 |
| Â | %C2 | %C3%82 |
| Ã | %C3 | %C3%83 |
| Ä | %C4 | %C3%84 |
| Å | %C5 | %C3%85 |
For a complete reference of all URL encodings, visit our URL Encoding Reference.
