sr-couchy 0.0.2

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Files changed (41) hide show
  1. data/README.textile +77 -0
  2. data/Rakefile +46 -0
  3. data/bin/couchy +80 -0
  4. data/couchy.gemspec +58 -0
  5. data/lib/couchy.rb +21 -0
  6. data/lib/couchy/database.rb +129 -0
  7. data/lib/couchy/server.rb +89 -0
  8. data/spec/couchy_spec.rb +71 -0
  9. data/spec/database_spec.rb +417 -0
  10. data/spec/fixtures/attachments/test.html +11 -0
  11. data/spec/fixtures/views/lib.js +3 -0
  12. data/spec/fixtures/views/test_view/lib.js +3 -0
  13. data/spec/fixtures/views/test_view/only-map.js +4 -0
  14. data/spec/fixtures/views/test_view/test-map.js +3 -0
  15. data/spec/fixtures/views/test_view/test-reduce.js +3 -0
  16. data/spec/spec.opts +6 -0
  17. data/spec/spec_helper.rb +5 -0
  18. data/test/couchy_test.rb +13 -0
  19. data/test/database_test.rb +193 -0
  20. data/test/server_test.rb +211 -0
  21. data/test/test_helper.rb +10 -0
  22. data/vendor/addressable/.gitignore +7 -0
  23. data/vendor/addressable/CHANGELOG +51 -0
  24. data/vendor/addressable/LICENSE +20 -0
  25. data/vendor/addressable/README +24 -0
  26. data/vendor/addressable/Rakefile +51 -0
  27. data/vendor/addressable/lib/addressable/idna.rb +4867 -0
  28. data/vendor/addressable/lib/addressable/uri.rb +2212 -0
  29. data/vendor/addressable/lib/addressable/version.rb +35 -0
  30. data/vendor/addressable/spec/addressable/idna_spec.rb +196 -0
  31. data/vendor/addressable/spec/addressable/uri_spec.rb +3827 -0
  32. data/vendor/addressable/spec/data/rfc3986.txt +3419 -0
  33. data/vendor/addressable/tasks/clobber.rake +2 -0
  34. data/vendor/addressable/tasks/gem.rake +62 -0
  35. data/vendor/addressable/tasks/git.rake +40 -0
  36. data/vendor/addressable/tasks/metrics.rake +22 -0
  37. data/vendor/addressable/tasks/rdoc.rake +29 -0
  38. data/vendor/addressable/tasks/rubyforge.rake +89 -0
  39. data/vendor/addressable/tasks/spec.rake +107 -0
  40. data/vendor/addressable/website/index.html +107 -0
  41. metadata +113 -0
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+
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+
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+
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+ Network Working Group T. Berners-Lee
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+ Request for Comments: 3986 W3C/MIT
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+ STD: 66 R. Fielding
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+ Updates: 1738 Day Software
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+ Obsoletes: 2732, 2396, 1808 L. Masinter
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+ Category: Standards Track Adobe Systems
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+ January 2005
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+
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+
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+ Uniform Resource Identifier (URI): Generic Syntax
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+
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+ Status of This Memo
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+
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+ This document specifies an Internet standards track protocol for the
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+ Internet community, and requests discussion and suggestions for
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+ improvements. Please refer to the current edition of the "Internet
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+ Official Protocol Standards" (STD 1) for the standardization state
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+ and status of this protocol. Distribution of this memo is unlimited.
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+
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+ Copyright Notice
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+
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+ Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2005).
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+
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+ Abstract
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+
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+ A Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) is a compact sequence of
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+ characters that identifies an abstract or physical resource. This
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+ specification defines the generic URI syntax and a process for
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+ resolving URI references that might be in relative form, along with
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+ guidelines and security considerations for the use of URIs on the
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+ Internet. The URI syntax defines a grammar that is a superset of all
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+ valid URIs, allowing an implementation to parse the common components
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+ of a URI reference without knowing the scheme-specific requirements
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+ of every possible identifier. This specification does not define a
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+ generative grammar for URIs; that task is performed by the individual
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+ specifications of each URI scheme.
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+
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+
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+
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+ Berners-Lee, et al. Standards Track [Page 1]
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+
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+ RFC 3986 URI Generic Syntax January 2005
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+
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+
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+ Table of Contents
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+
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+ 1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
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+ 1.1. Overview of URIs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
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+ 1.1.1. Generic Syntax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
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+ 1.1.2. Examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
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+ 1.1.3. URI, URL, and URN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
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+ 1.2. Design Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
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+ 1.2.1. Transcription . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
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+ 1.2.2. Separating Identification from Interaction . . . 9
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+ 1.2.3. Hierarchical Identifiers . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
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+ 1.3. Syntax Notation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
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+ 2. Characters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
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+ 2.1. Percent-Encoding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
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+ 2.2. Reserved Characters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
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+ 2.3. Unreserved Characters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
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+ 2.4. When to Encode or Decode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
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+ 2.5. Identifying Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
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+ 3. Syntax Components . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
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+ 3.1. Scheme . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
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+ 3.2. Authority . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
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+ 3.2.1. User Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
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+ 3.2.2. Host . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
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+ 3.2.3. Port . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
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+ 3.3. Path . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
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+ 3.4. Query . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
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+ 3.5. Fragment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
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+ 4. Usage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
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+ 4.1. URI Reference . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
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+ 4.2. Relative Reference . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
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+ 4.3. Absolute URI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
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+ 4.4. Same-Document Reference . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
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+ 4.5. Suffix Reference . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
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+ 5. Reference Resolution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
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+ 5.1. Establishing a Base URI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
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+ 5.1.1. Base URI Embedded in Content . . . . . . . . . . 29
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+ 5.1.2. Base URI from the Encapsulating Entity . . . . . 29
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+ 5.1.3. Base URI from the Retrieval URI . . . . . . . . 30
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+ 5.1.4. Default Base URI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
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+ 5.2. Relative Resolution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
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+ 5.2.1. Pre-parse the Base URI . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
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+ 5.2.2. Transform References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
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+ 5.2.3. Merge Paths . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
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+ 5.2.4. Remove Dot Segments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
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+ 5.3. Component Recomposition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
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+ 5.4. Reference Resolution Examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
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+ 5.4.1. Normal Examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
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+ 5.4.2. Abnormal Examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
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+
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+
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+
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+ Berners-Lee, et al. Standards Track [Page 2]
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+
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+ RFC 3986 URI Generic Syntax January 2005
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+
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+
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+ 6. Normalization and Comparison . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
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+ 6.1. Equivalence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
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+ 6.2. Comparison Ladder . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
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+ 6.2.1. Simple String Comparison . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
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+ 6.2.2. Syntax-Based Normalization . . . . . . . . . . . 40
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+ 6.2.3. Scheme-Based Normalization . . . . . . . . . . . 41
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+ 6.2.4. Protocol-Based Normalization . . . . . . . . . . 42
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+ 7. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
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+ 7.1. Reliability and Consistency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
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+ 7.2. Malicious Construction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
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+ 7.3. Back-End Transcoding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
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+ 7.4. Rare IP Address Formats . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
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+ 7.5. Sensitive Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
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+ 7.6. Semantic Attacks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
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+ 8. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
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+ 9. Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
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+ 10. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
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+ 10.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
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+ 10.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
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+ A. Collected ABNF for URI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
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+ B. Parsing a URI Reference with a Regular Expression . . . . . . 50
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+ C. Delimiting a URI in Context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
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+ D. Changes from RFC 2396 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
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+ D.1. Additions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
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+ D.2. Modifications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
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+ Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
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+ Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
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+ Full Copyright Statement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
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+
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+ Berners-Lee, et al. Standards Track [Page 3]
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+
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+ RFC 3986 URI Generic Syntax January 2005
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+
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+
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+ 1. Introduction
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+
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+ A Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) provides a simple and extensible
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+ means for identifying a resource. This specification of URI syntax
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+ and semantics is derived from concepts introduced by the World Wide
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+ Web global information initiative, whose use of these identifiers
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+ dates from 1990 and is described in "Universal Resource Identifiers
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+ in WWW" [RFC1630]. The syntax is designed to meet the
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+ recommendations laid out in "Functional Recommendations for Internet
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+ Resource Locators" [RFC1736] and "Functional Requirements for Uniform
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+ Resource Names" [RFC1737].
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+
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+ This document obsoletes [RFC2396], which merged "Uniform Resource
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+ Locators" [RFC1738] and "Relative Uniform Resource Locators"
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+ [RFC1808] in order to define a single, generic syntax for all URIs.
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+ It obsoletes [RFC2732], which introduced syntax for an IPv6 address.
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+ It excludes portions of RFC 1738 that defined the specific syntax of
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+ individual URI schemes; those portions will be updated as separate
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+ documents. The process for registration of new URI schemes is
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+ defined separately by [BCP35]. Advice for designers of new URI
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+ schemes can be found in [RFC2718]. All significant changes from RFC
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+ 2396 are noted in Appendix D.
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+
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+ This specification uses the terms "character" and "coded character
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+ set" in accordance with the definitions provided in [BCP19], and
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+ "character encoding" in place of what [BCP19] refers to as a
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+ "charset".
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+ 1.1. Overview of URIs
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+
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+ URIs are characterized as follows:
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+
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+ Uniform
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+
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+ Uniformity provides several benefits. It allows different types
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+ of resource identifiers to be used in the same context, even when
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+ the mechanisms used to access those resources may differ. It
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+ allows uniform semantic interpretation of common syntactic
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+ conventions across different types of resource identifiers. It
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+ allows introduction of new types of resource identifiers without
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+ interfering with the way that existing identifiers are used. It
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+ allows the identifiers to be reused in many different contexts,
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+ thus permitting new applications or protocols to leverage a pre-
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+ existing, large, and widely used set of resource identifiers.
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+ Berners-Lee, et al. Standards Track [Page 4]
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+ RFC 3986 URI Generic Syntax January 2005
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+
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+
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+ Resource
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+
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+ This specification does not limit the scope of what might be a
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+ resource; rather, the term "resource" is used in a general sense
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+ for whatever might be identified by a URI. Familiar examples
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+ include an electronic document, an image, a source of information
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+ with a consistent purpose (e.g., "today's weather report for Los
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+ Angeles"), a service (e.g., an HTTP-to-SMS gateway), and a
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+ collection of other resources. A resource is not necessarily
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+ accessible via the Internet; e.g., human beings, corporations, and
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+ bound books in a library can also be resources. Likewise,
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+ abstract concepts can be resources, such as the operators and
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+ operands of a mathematical equation, the types of a relationship
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+ (e.g., "parent" or "employee"), or numeric values (e.g., zero,
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+ one, and infinity).
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+
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+ Identifier
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+
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+ An identifier embodies the information required to distinguish
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+ what is being identified from all other things within its scope of
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+ identification. Our use of the terms "identify" and "identifying"
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+ refer to this purpose of distinguishing one resource from all
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+ other resources, regardless of how that purpose is accomplished
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+ (e.g., by name, address, or context). These terms should not be
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+ mistaken as an assumption that an identifier defines or embodies
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+ the identity of what is referenced, though that may be the case
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+ for some identifiers. Nor should it be assumed that a system
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+ using URIs will access the resource identified: in many cases,
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+ URIs are used to denote resources without any intention that they
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+ be accessed. Likewise, the "one" resource identified might not be
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+ singular in nature (e.g., a resource might be a named set or a
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+ mapping that varies over time).
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+
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+ A URI is an identifier consisting of a sequence of characters
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+ matching the syntax rule named <URI> in Section 3. It enables
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+ uniform identification of resources via a separately defined
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+ extensible set of naming schemes (Section 3.1). How that
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+ identification is accomplished, assigned, or enabled is delegated to
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+ each scheme specification.
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+
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+ This specification does not place any limits on the nature of a
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+ resource, the reasons why an application might seek to refer to a
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+ resource, or the kinds of systems that might use URIs for the sake of
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+ identifying resources. This specification does not require that a
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+ URI persists in identifying the same resource over time, though that
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+ is a common goal of all URI schemes. Nevertheless, nothing in this
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+ Berners-Lee, et al. Standards Track [Page 5]
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+ RFC 3986 URI Generic Syntax January 2005
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+
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+ specification prevents an application from limiting itself to
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+ particular types of resources, or to a subset of URIs that maintains
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+ characteristics desired by that application.
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+
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+ URIs have a global scope and are interpreted consistently regardless
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+ of context, though the result of that interpretation may be in
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+ relation to the end-user's context. For example, "http://localhost/"
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+ has the same interpretation for every user of that reference, even
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+ though the network interface corresponding to "localhost" may be
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+ different for each end-user: interpretation is independent of access.
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+ However, an action made on the basis of that reference will take
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+ place in relation to the end-user's context, which implies that an
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+ action intended to refer to a globally unique thing must use a URI
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+ that distinguishes that resource from all other things. URIs that
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+ identify in relation to the end-user's local context should only be
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+ used when the context itself is a defining aspect of the resource,
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+ such as when an on-line help manual refers to a file on the end-
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+ user's file system (e.g., "file:///etc/hosts").
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+
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+ 1.1.1. Generic Syntax
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+
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+ Each URI begins with a scheme name, as defined in Section 3.1, that
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+ refers to a specification for assigning identifiers within that
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+ scheme. As such, the URI syntax is a federated and extensible naming
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+ system wherein each scheme's specification may further restrict the
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+ syntax and semantics of identifiers using that scheme.
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+
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+ This specification defines those elements of the URI syntax that are
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+ required of all URI schemes or are common to many URI schemes. It
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+ thus defines the syntax and semantics needed to implement a scheme-
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+ independent parsing mechanism for URI references, by which the
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+ scheme-dependent handling of a URI can be postponed until the
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+ scheme-dependent semantics are needed. Likewise, protocols and data
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+ formats that make use of URI references can refer to this
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+ specification as a definition for the range of syntax allowed for all
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+ URIs, including those schemes that have yet to be defined. This
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+ decouples the evolution of identification schemes from the evolution
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+ of protocols, data formats, and implementations that make use of
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+ URIs.
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+
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+ A parser of the generic URI syntax can parse any URI reference into
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+ its major components. Once the scheme is determined, further
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+ scheme-specific parsing can be performed on the components. In other
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+ words, the URI generic syntax is a superset of the syntax of all URI
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+ schemes.
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+ Berners-Lee, et al. Standards Track [Page 6]
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+ RFC 3986 URI Generic Syntax January 2005
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+
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+ 1.1.2. Examples
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+
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+ The following example URIs illustrate several URI schemes and
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+ variations in their common syntax components:
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+
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+ ftp://ftp.is.co.za/rfc/rfc1808.txt
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+
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+ http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2396.txt
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+
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+ ldap://[2001:db8::7]/c=GB?objectClass?one
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+
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+ mailto:John.Doe@example.com
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+ news:comp.infosystems.www.servers.unix
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+ tel:+1-816-555-1212
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+ telnet://192.0.2.16:80/
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+
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+ urn:oasis:names:specification:docbook:dtd:xml:4.1.2
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+
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+
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+ 1.1.3. URI, URL, and URN
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+
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+ A URI can be further classified as a locator, a name, or both. The
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+ term "Uniform Resource Locator" (URL) refers to the subset of URIs
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+ that, in addition to identifying a resource, provide a means of
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+ locating the resource by describing its primary access mechanism
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+ (e.g., its network "location"). The term "Uniform Resource Name"
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+ (URN) has been used historically to refer to both URIs under the
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+ "urn" scheme [RFC2141], which are required to remain globally unique
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+ and persistent even when the resource ceases to exist or becomes
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+ unavailable, and to any other URI with the properties of a name.
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+
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+ An individual scheme does not have to be classified as being just one
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+ of "name" or "locator". Instances of URIs from any given scheme may
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+ have the characteristics of names or locators or both, often
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+ depending on the persistence and care in the assignment of
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+ identifiers by the naming authority, rather than on any quality of
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+ the scheme. Future specifications and related documentation should
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+ use the general term "URI" rather than the more restrictive terms
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+ "URL" and "URN" [RFC3305].
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+ Berners-Lee, et al. Standards Track [Page 7]
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+ RFC 3986 URI Generic Syntax January 2005
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+ 1.2. Design Considerations
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+ 1.2.1. Transcription
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+
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+ The URI syntax has been designed with global transcription as one of
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+ its main considerations. A URI is a sequence of characters from a
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+ very limited set: the letters of the basic Latin alphabet, digits,
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+ and a few special characters. A URI may be represented in a variety
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+ of ways; e.g., ink on paper, pixels on a screen, or a sequence of
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+ character encoding octets. The interpretation of a URI depends only
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+ on the characters used and not on how those characters are
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+ represented in a network protocol.
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+
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+ The goal of transcription can be described by a simple scenario.
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+ Imagine two colleagues, Sam and Kim, sitting in a pub at an
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+ international conference and exchanging research ideas. Sam asks Kim
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+ for a location to get more information, so Kim writes the URI for the
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+ research site on a napkin. Upon returning home, Sam takes out the
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+ napkin and types the URI into a computer, which then retrieves the
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+ information to which Kim referred.
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+
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+ There are several design considerations revealed by the scenario:
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+
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+ o A URI is a sequence of characters that is not always represented
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+ as a sequence of octets.
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+
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+ o A URI might be transcribed from a non-network source and thus
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+ should consist of characters that are most likely able to be
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+ entered into a computer, within the constraints imposed by
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+ keyboards (and related input devices) across languages and
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+ locales.
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+
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+ o A URI often has to be remembered by people, and it is easier for
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+ people to remember a URI when it consists of meaningful or
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+ familiar components.
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+
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+ These design considerations are not always in alignment. For
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+ example, it is often the case that the most meaningful name for a URI
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+ component would require characters that cannot be typed into some
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+ systems. The ability to transcribe a resource identifier from one
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+ medium to another has been considered more important than having a
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+ URI consist of the most meaningful of components.
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+
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+ In local or regional contexts and with improving technology, users
443
+ might benefit from being able to use a wider range of characters;
444
+ such use is not defined by this specification. Percent-encoded
445
+ octets (Section 2.1) may be used within a URI to represent characters
446
+ outside the range of the US-ASCII coded character set if this
447
+
448
+
449
+
450
+ Berners-Lee, et al. Standards Track [Page 8]
451
+
452
+ RFC 3986 URI Generic Syntax January 2005
453
+
454
+
455
+ representation is allowed by the scheme or by the protocol element in
456
+ which the URI is referenced. Such a definition should specify the
457
+ character encoding used to map those characters to octets prior to
458
+ being percent-encoded for the URI.
459
+
460
+ 1.2.2. Separating Identification from Interaction
461
+
462
+ A common misunderstanding of URIs is that they are only used to refer
463
+ to accessible resources. The URI itself only provides
464
+ identification; access to the resource is neither guaranteed nor
465
+ implied by the presence of a URI. Instead, any operation associated
466
+ with a URI reference is defined by the protocol element, data format
467
+ attribute, or natural language text in which it appears.
468
+
469
+ Given a URI, a system may attempt to perform a variety of operations
470
+ on the resource, as might be characterized by words such as "access",
471
+ "update", "replace", or "find attributes". Such operations are
472
+ defined by the protocols that make use of URIs, not by this
473
+ specification. However, we do use a few general terms for describing
474
+ common operations on URIs. URI "resolution" is the process of
475
+ determining an access mechanism and the appropriate parameters
476
+ necessary to dereference a URI; this resolution may require several
477
+ iterations. To use that access mechanism to perform an action on the
478
+ URI's resource is to "dereference" the URI.
479
+
480
+ When URIs are used within information retrieval systems to identify
481
+ sources of information, the most common form of URI dereference is
482
+ "retrieval": making use of a URI in order to retrieve a
483
+ representation of its associated resource. A "representation" is a
484
+ sequence of octets, along with representation metadata describing
485
+ those octets, that constitutes a record of the state of the resource
486
+ at the time when the representation is generated. Retrieval is
487
+ achieved by a process that might include using the URI as a cache key
488
+ to check for a locally cached representation, resolution of the URI
489
+ to determine an appropriate access mechanism (if any), and
490
+ dereference of the URI for the sake of applying a retrieval
491
+ operation. Depending on the protocols used to perform the retrieval,
492
+ additional information might be supplied about the resource (resource
493
+ metadata) and its relation to other resources.
494
+
495
+ URI references in information retrieval systems are designed to be
496
+ late-binding: the result of an access is generally determined when it
497
+ is accessed and may vary over time or due to other aspects of the
498
+ interaction. These references are created in order to be used in the
499
+ future: what is being identified is not some specific result that was
500
+ obtained in the past, but rather some characteristic that is expected
501
+ to be true for future results. In such cases, the resource referred
502
+ to by the URI is actually a sameness of characteristics as observed
503
+
504
+
505
+
506
+ Berners-Lee, et al. Standards Track [Page 9]
507
+
508
+ RFC 3986 URI Generic Syntax January 2005
509
+
510
+
511
+ over time, perhaps elucidated by additional comments or assertions
512
+ made by the resource provider.
513
+
514
+ Although many URI schemes are named after protocols, this does not
515
+ imply that use of these URIs will result in access to the resource
516
+ via the named protocol. URIs are often used simply for the sake of
517
+ identification. Even when a URI is used to retrieve a representation
518
+ of a resource, that access might be through gateways, proxies,
519
+ caches, and name resolution services that are independent of the
520
+ protocol associated with the scheme name. The resolution of some
521
+ URIs may require the use of more than one protocol (e.g., both DNS
522
+ and HTTP are typically used to access an "http" URI's origin server
523
+ when a representation isn't found in a local cache).
524
+
525
+ 1.2.3. Hierarchical Identifiers
526
+
527
+ The URI syntax is organized hierarchically, with components listed in
528
+ order of decreasing significance from left to right. For some URI
529
+ schemes, the visible hierarchy is limited to the scheme itself:
530
+ everything after the scheme component delimiter (":") is considered
531
+ opaque to URI processing. Other URI schemes make the hierarchy
532
+ explicit and visible to generic parsing algorithms.
533
+
534
+ The generic syntax uses the slash ("/"), question mark ("?"), and
535
+ number sign ("#") characters to delimit components that are
536
+ significant to the generic parser's hierarchical interpretation of an
537
+ identifier. In addition to aiding the readability of such
538
+ identifiers through the consistent use of familiar syntax, this
539
+ uniform representation of hierarchy across naming schemes allows
540
+ scheme-independent references to be made relative to that hierarchy.
541
+
542
+ It is often the case that a group or "tree" of documents has been
543
+ constructed to serve a common purpose, wherein the vast majority of
544
+ URI references in these documents point to resources within the tree
545
+ rather than outside it. Similarly, documents located at a particular
546
+ site are much more likely to refer to other resources at that site
547
+ than to resources at remote sites. Relative referencing of URIs
548
+ allows document trees to be partially independent of their location
549
+ and access scheme. For instance, it is possible for a single set of
550
+ hypertext documents to be simultaneously accessible and traversable
551
+ via each of the "file", "http", and "ftp" schemes if the documents
552
+ refer to each other with relative references. Furthermore, such
553
+ document trees can be moved, as a whole, without changing any of the
554
+ relative references.
555
+
556
+ A relative reference (Section 4.2) refers to a resource by describing
557
+ the difference within a hierarchical name space between the reference
558
+ context and the target URI. The reference resolution algorithm,
559
+
560
+
561
+
562
+ Berners-Lee, et al. Standards Track [Page 10]
563
+
564
+ RFC 3986 URI Generic Syntax January 2005
565
+
566
+
567
+ presented in Section 5, defines how such a reference is transformed
568
+ to the target URI. As relative references can only be used within
569
+ the context of a hierarchical URI, designers of new URI schemes
570
+ should use a syntax consistent with the generic syntax's hierarchical
571
+ components unless there are compelling reasons to forbid relative
572
+ referencing within that scheme.
573
+
574
+ NOTE: Previous specifications used the terms "partial URI" and
575
+ "relative URI" to denote a relative reference to a URI. As some
576
+ readers misunderstood those terms to mean that relative URIs are a
577
+ subset of URIs rather than a method of referencing URIs, this
578
+ specification simply refers to them as relative references.
579
+
580
+ All URI references are parsed by generic syntax parsers when used.
581
+ However, because hierarchical processing has no effect on an absolute
582
+ URI used in a reference unless it contains one or more dot-segments
583
+ (complete path segments of "." or "..", as described in Section 3.3),
584
+ URI scheme specifications can define opaque identifiers by
585
+ disallowing use of slash characters, question mark characters, and
586
+ the URIs "scheme:." and "scheme:..".
587
+
588
+ 1.3. Syntax Notation
589
+
590
+ This specification uses the Augmented Backus-Naur Form (ABNF)
591
+ notation of [RFC2234], including the following core ABNF syntax rules
592
+ defined by that specification: ALPHA (letters), CR (carriage return),
593
+ DIGIT (decimal digits), DQUOTE (double quote), HEXDIG (hexadecimal
594
+ digits), LF (line feed), and SP (space). The complete URI syntax is
595
+ collected in Appendix A.
596
+
597
+ 2. Characters
598
+
599
+ The URI syntax provides a method of encoding data, presumably for the
600
+ sake of identifying a resource, as a sequence of characters. The URI
601
+ characters are, in turn, frequently encoded as octets for transport
602
+ or presentation. This specification does not mandate any particular
603
+ character encoding for mapping between URI characters and the octets
604
+ used to store or transmit those characters. When a URI appears in a
605
+ protocol element, the character encoding is defined by that protocol;
606
+ without such a definition, a URI is assumed to be in the same
607
+ character encoding as the surrounding text.
608
+
609
+ The ABNF notation defines its terminal values to be non-negative
610
+ integers (codepoints) based on the US-ASCII coded character set
611
+ [ASCII]. Because a URI is a sequence of characters, we must invert
612
+ that relation in order to understand the URI syntax. Therefore, the
613
+
614
+
615
+
616
+
617
+
618
+ Berners-Lee, et al. Standards Track [Page 11]
619
+
620
+ RFC 3986 URI Generic Syntax January 2005
621
+
622
+
623
+ integer values used by the ABNF must be mapped back to their
624
+ corresponding characters via US-ASCII in order to complete the syntax
625
+ rules.
626
+
627
+ A URI is composed from a limited set of characters consisting of
628
+ digits, letters, and a few graphic symbols. A reserved subset of
629
+ those characters may be used to delimit syntax components within a
630
+ URI while the remaining characters, including both the unreserved set
631
+ and those reserved characters not acting as delimiters, define each
632
+ component's identifying data.
633
+
634
+ 2.1. Percent-Encoding
635
+
636
+ A percent-encoding mechanism is used to represent a data octet in a
637
+ component when that octet's corresponding character is outside the
638
+ allowed set or is being used as a delimiter of, or within, the
639
+ component. A percent-encoded octet is encoded as a character
640
+ triplet, consisting of the percent character "%" followed by the two
641
+ hexadecimal digits representing that octet's numeric value. For
642
+ example, "%20" is the percent-encoding for the binary octet
643
+ "00100000" (ABNF: %x20), which in US-ASCII corresponds to the space
644
+ character (SP). Section 2.4 describes when percent-encoding and
645
+ decoding is applied.
646
+
647
+ pct-encoded = "%" HEXDIG HEXDIG
648
+
649
+ The uppercase hexadecimal digits 'A' through 'F' are equivalent to
650
+ the lowercase digits 'a' through 'f', respectively. If two URIs
651
+ differ only in the case of hexadecimal digits used in percent-encoded
652
+ octets, they are equivalent. For consistency, URI producers and
653
+ normalizers should use uppercase hexadecimal digits for all percent-
654
+ encodings.
655
+
656
+ 2.2. Reserved Characters
657
+
658
+ URIs include components and subcomponents that are delimited by
659
+ characters in the "reserved" set. These characters are called
660
+ "reserved" because they may (or may not) be defined as delimiters by
661
+ the generic syntax, by each scheme-specific syntax, or by the
662
+ implementation-specific syntax of a URI's dereferencing algorithm.
663
+ If data for a URI component would conflict with a reserved
664
+ character's purpose as a delimiter, then the conflicting data must be
665
+ percent-encoded before the URI is formed.
666
+
667
+
668
+
669
+
670
+
671
+
672
+
673
+
674
+ Berners-Lee, et al. Standards Track [Page 12]
675
+
676
+ RFC 3986 URI Generic Syntax January 2005
677
+
678
+
679
+ reserved = gen-delims / sub-delims
680
+
681
+ gen-delims = ":" / "/" / "?" / "#" / "[" / "]" / "@"
682
+
683
+ sub-delims = "!" / "$" / "&" / "'" / "(" / ")"
684
+ / "*" / "+" / "," / ";" / "="
685
+
686
+ The purpose of reserved characters is to provide a set of delimiting
687
+ characters that are distinguishable from other data within a URI.
688
+ URIs that differ in the replacement of a reserved character with its
689
+ corresponding percent-encoded octet are not equivalent. Percent-
690
+ encoding a reserved character, or decoding a percent-encoded octet
691
+ that corresponds to a reserved character, will change how the URI is
692
+ interpreted by most applications. Thus, characters in the reserved
693
+ set are protected from normalization and are therefore safe to be
694
+ used by scheme-specific and producer-specific algorithms for
695
+ delimiting data subcomponents within a URI.
696
+
697
+ A subset of the reserved characters (gen-delims) is used as
698
+ delimiters of the generic URI components described in Section 3. A
699
+ component's ABNF syntax rule will not use the reserved or gen-delims
700
+ rule names directly; instead, each syntax rule lists the characters
701
+ allowed within that component (i.e., not delimiting it), and any of
702
+ those characters that are also in the reserved set are "reserved" for
703
+ use as subcomponent delimiters within the component. Only the most
704
+ common subcomponents are defined by this specification; other
705
+ subcomponents may be defined by a URI scheme's specification, or by
706
+ the implementation-specific syntax of a URI's dereferencing
707
+ algorithm, provided that such subcomponents are delimited by
708
+ characters in the reserved set allowed within that component.
709
+
710
+ URI producing applications should percent-encode data octets that
711
+ correspond to characters in the reserved set unless these characters
712
+ are specifically allowed by the URI scheme to represent data in that
713
+ component. If a reserved character is found in a URI component and
714
+ no delimiting role is known for that character, then it must be
715
+ interpreted as representing the data octet corresponding to that
716
+ character's encoding in US-ASCII.
717
+
718
+ 2.3. Unreserved Characters
719
+
720
+ Characters that are allowed in a URI but do not have a reserved
721
+ purpose are called unreserved. These include uppercase and lowercase
722
+ letters, decimal digits, hyphen, period, underscore, and tilde.
723
+
724
+ unreserved = ALPHA / DIGIT / "-" / "." / "_" / "~"
725
+
726
+
727
+
728
+
729
+
730
+ Berners-Lee, et al. Standards Track [Page 13]
731
+
732
+ RFC 3986 URI Generic Syntax January 2005
733
+
734
+
735
+ URIs that differ in the replacement of an unreserved character with
736
+ its corresponding percent-encoded US-ASCII octet are equivalent: they
737
+ identify the same resource. However, URI comparison implementations
738
+ do not always perform normalization prior to comparison (see Section
739
+ 6). For consistency, percent-encoded octets in the ranges of ALPHA
740
+ (%41-%5A and %61-%7A), DIGIT (%30-%39), hyphen (%2D), period (%2E),
741
+ underscore (%5F), or tilde (%7E) should not be created by URI
742
+ producers and, when found in a URI, should be decoded to their
743
+ corresponding unreserved characters by URI normalizers.
744
+
745
+ 2.4. When to Encode or Decode
746
+
747
+ Under normal circumstances, the only time when octets within a URI
748
+ are percent-encoded is during the process of producing the URI from
749
+ its component parts. This is when an implementation determines which
750
+ of the reserved characters are to be used as subcomponent delimiters
751
+ and which can be safely used as data. Once produced, a URI is always
752
+ in its percent-encoded form.
753
+
754
+ When a URI is dereferenced, the components and subcomponents
755
+ significant to the scheme-specific dereferencing process (if any)
756
+ must be parsed and separated before the percent-encoded octets within
757
+ those components can be safely decoded, as otherwise the data may be
758
+ mistaken for component delimiters. The only exception is for
759
+ percent-encoded octets corresponding to characters in the unreserved
760
+ set, which can be decoded at any time. For example, the octet
761
+ corresponding to the tilde ("~") character is often encoded as "%7E"
762
+ by older URI processing implementations; the "%7E" can be replaced by
763
+ "~" without changing its interpretation.
764
+
765
+ Because the percent ("%") character serves as the indicator for
766
+ percent-encoded octets, it must be percent-encoded as "%25" for that
767
+ octet to be used as data within a URI. Implementations must not
768
+ percent-encode or decode the same string more than once, as decoding
769
+ an already decoded string might lead to misinterpreting a percent
770
+ data octet as the beginning of a percent-encoding, or vice versa in
771
+ the case of percent-encoding an already percent-encoded string.
772
+
773
+ 2.5. Identifying Data
774
+
775
+ URI characters provide identifying data for each of the URI
776
+ components, serving as an external interface for identification
777
+ between systems. Although the presence and nature of the URI
778
+ production interface is hidden from clients that use its URIs (and is
779
+ thus beyond the scope of the interoperability requirements defined by
780
+ this specification), it is a frequent source of confusion and errors
781
+ in the interpretation of URI character issues. Implementers have to
782
+ be aware that there are multiple character encodings involved in the
783
+
784
+
785
+
786
+ Berners-Lee, et al. Standards Track [Page 14]
787
+
788
+ RFC 3986 URI Generic Syntax January 2005
789
+
790
+
791
+ production and transmission of URIs: local name and data encoding,
792
+ public interface encoding, URI character encoding, data format
793
+ encoding, and protocol encoding.
794
+
795
+ Local names, such as file system names, are stored with a local
796
+ character encoding. URI producing applications (e.g., origin
797
+ servers) will typically use the local encoding as the basis for
798
+ producing meaningful names. The URI producer will transform the
799
+ local encoding to one that is suitable for a public interface and
800
+ then transform the public interface encoding into the restricted set
801
+ of URI characters (reserved, unreserved, and percent-encodings).
802
+ Those characters are, in turn, encoded as octets to be used as a
803
+ reference within a data format (e.g., a document charset), and such
804
+ data formats are often subsequently encoded for transmission over
805
+ Internet protocols.
806
+
807
+ For most systems, an unreserved character appearing within a URI
808
+ component is interpreted as representing the data octet corresponding
809
+ to that character's encoding in US-ASCII. Consumers of URIs assume
810
+ that the letter "X" corresponds to the octet "01011000", and even
811
+ when that assumption is incorrect, there is no harm in making it. A
812
+ system that internally provides identifiers in the form of a
813
+ different character encoding, such as EBCDIC, will generally perform
814
+ character translation of textual identifiers to UTF-8 [STD63] (or
815
+ some other superset of the US-ASCII character encoding) at an
816
+ internal interface, thereby providing more meaningful identifiers
817
+ than those resulting from simply percent-encoding the original
818
+ octets.
819
+
820
+ For example, consider an information service that provides data,
821
+ stored locally using an EBCDIC-based file system, to clients on the
822
+ Internet through an HTTP server. When an author creates a file with
823
+ the name "Laguna Beach" on that file system, the "http" URI
824
+ corresponding to that resource is expected to contain the meaningful
825
+ string "Laguna%20Beach". If, however, that server produces URIs by
826
+ using an overly simplistic raw octet mapping, then the result would
827
+ be a URI containing "%D3%81%87%A4%95%81@%C2%85%81%83%88". An
828
+ internal transcoding interface fixes this problem by transcoding the
829
+ local name to a superset of US-ASCII prior to producing the URI.
830
+ Naturally, proper interpretation of an incoming URI on such an
831
+ interface requires that percent-encoded octets be decoded (e.g.,
832
+ "%20" to SP) before the reverse transcoding is applied to obtain the
833
+ local name.
834
+
835
+ In some cases, the internal interface between a URI component and the
836
+ identifying data that it has been crafted to represent is much less
837
+ direct than a character encoding translation. For example, portions
838
+ of a URI might reflect a query on non-ASCII data, or numeric
839
+
840
+
841
+
842
+ Berners-Lee, et al. Standards Track [Page 15]
843
+
844
+ RFC 3986 URI Generic Syntax January 2005
845
+
846
+
847
+ coordinates on a map. Likewise, a URI scheme may define components
848
+ with additional encoding requirements that are applied prior to
849
+ forming the component and producing the URI.
850
+
851
+ When a new URI scheme defines a component that represents textual
852
+ data consisting of characters from the Universal Character Set [UCS],
853
+ the data should first be encoded as octets according to the UTF-8
854
+ character encoding [STD63]; then only those octets that do not
855
+ correspond to characters in the unreserved set should be percent-
856
+ encoded. For example, the character A would be represented as "A",
857
+ the character LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A WITH GRAVE would be represented
858
+ as "%C3%80", and the character KATAKANA LETTER A would be represented
859
+ as "%E3%82%A2".
860
+
861
+ 3. Syntax Components
862
+
863
+ The generic URI syntax consists of a hierarchical sequence of
864
+ components referred to as the scheme, authority, path, query, and
865
+ fragment.
866
+
867
+ URI = scheme ":" hier-part [ "?" query ] [ "#" fragment ]
868
+
869
+ hier-part = "//" authority path-abempty
870
+ / path-absolute
871
+ / path-rootless
872
+ / path-empty
873
+
874
+ The scheme and path components are required, though the path may be
875
+ empty (no characters). When authority is present, the path must
876
+ either be empty or begin with a slash ("/") character. When
877
+ authority is not present, the path cannot begin with two slash
878
+ characters ("//"). These restrictions result in five different ABNF
879
+ rules for a path (Section 3.3), only one of which will match any
880
+ given URI reference.
881
+
882
+ The following are two example URIs and their component parts:
883
+
884
+ foo://example.com:8042/over/there?name=ferret#nose
885
+ \_/ \______________/\_________/ \_________/ \__/
886
+ | | | | |
887
+ scheme authority path query fragment
888
+ | _____________________|__
889
+ / \ / \
890
+ urn:example:animal:ferret:nose
891
+
892
+
893
+
894
+
895
+
896
+
897
+
898
+ Berners-Lee, et al. Standards Track [Page 16]
899
+
900
+ RFC 3986 URI Generic Syntax January 2005
901
+
902
+
903
+ 3.1. Scheme
904
+
905
+ Each URI begins with a scheme name that refers to a specification for
906
+ assigning identifiers within that scheme. As such, the URI syntax is
907
+ a federated and extensible naming system wherein each scheme's
908
+ specification may further restrict the syntax and semantics of
909
+ identifiers using that scheme.
910
+
911
+ Scheme names consist of a sequence of characters beginning with a
912
+ letter and followed by any combination of letters, digits, plus
913
+ ("+"), period ("."), or hyphen ("-"). Although schemes are case-
914
+ insensitive, the canonical form is lowercase and documents that
915
+ specify schemes must do so with lowercase letters. An implementation
916
+ should accept uppercase letters as equivalent to lowercase in scheme
917
+ names (e.g., allow "HTTP" as well as "http") for the sake of
918
+ robustness but should only produce lowercase scheme names for
919
+ consistency.
920
+
921
+ scheme = ALPHA *( ALPHA / DIGIT / "+" / "-" / "." )
922
+
923
+ Individual schemes are not specified by this document. The process
924
+ for registration of new URI schemes is defined separately by [BCP35].
925
+ The scheme registry maintains the mapping between scheme names and
926
+ their specifications. Advice for designers of new URI schemes can be
927
+ found in [RFC2718]. URI scheme specifications must define their own
928
+ syntax so that all strings matching their scheme-specific syntax will
929
+ also match the <absolute-URI> grammar, as described in Section 4.3.
930
+
931
+ When presented with a URI that violates one or more scheme-specific
932
+ restrictions, the scheme-specific resolution process should flag the
933
+ reference as an error rather than ignore the unused parts; doing so
934
+ reduces the number of equivalent URIs and helps detect abuses of the
935
+ generic syntax, which might indicate that the URI has been
936
+ constructed to mislead the user (Section 7.6).
937
+
938
+ 3.2. Authority
939
+
940
+ Many URI schemes include a hierarchical element for a naming
941
+ authority so that governance of the name space defined by the
942
+ remainder of the URI is delegated to that authority (which may, in
943
+ turn, delegate it further). The generic syntax provides a common
944
+ means for distinguishing an authority based on a registered name or
945
+ server address, along with optional port and user information.
946
+
947
+ The authority component is preceded by a double slash ("//") and is
948
+ terminated by the next slash ("/"), question mark ("?"), or number
949
+ sign ("#") character, or by the end of the URI.
950
+
951
+
952
+
953
+
954
+ Berners-Lee, et al. Standards Track [Page 17]
955
+
956
+ RFC 3986 URI Generic Syntax January 2005
957
+
958
+
959
+ authority = [ userinfo "@" ] host [ ":" port ]
960
+
961
+ URI producers and normalizers should omit the ":" delimiter that
962
+ separates host from port if the port component is empty. Some
963
+ schemes do not allow the userinfo and/or port subcomponents.
964
+
965
+ If a URI contains an authority component, then the path component
966
+ must either be empty or begin with a slash ("/") character. Non-
967
+ validating parsers (those that merely separate a URI reference into
968
+ its major components) will often ignore the subcomponent structure of
969
+ authority, treating it as an opaque string from the double-slash to
970
+ the first terminating delimiter, until such time as the URI is
971
+ dereferenced.
972
+
973
+ 3.2.1. User Information
974
+
975
+ The userinfo subcomponent may consist of a user name and, optionally,
976
+ scheme-specific information about how to gain authorization to access
977
+ the resource. The user information, if present, is followed by a
978
+ commercial at-sign ("@") that delimits it from the host.
979
+
980
+ userinfo = *( unreserved / pct-encoded / sub-delims / ":" )
981
+
982
+ Use of the format "user:password" in the userinfo field is
983
+ deprecated. Applications should not render as clear text any data
984
+ after the first colon (":") character found within a userinfo
985
+ subcomponent unless the data after the colon is the empty string
986
+ (indicating no password). Applications may choose to ignore or
987
+ reject such data when it is received as part of a reference and
988
+ should reject the storage of such data in unencrypted form. The
989
+ passing of authentication information in clear text has proven to be
990
+ a security risk in almost every case where it has been used.
991
+
992
+ Applications that render a URI for the sake of user feedback, such as
993
+ in graphical hypertext browsing, should render userinfo in a way that
994
+ is distinguished from the rest of a URI, when feasible. Such
995
+ rendering will assist the user in cases where the userinfo has been
996
+ misleadingly crafted to look like a trusted domain name
997
+ (Section 7.6).
998
+
999
+ 3.2.2. Host
1000
+
1001
+ The host subcomponent of authority is identified by an IP literal
1002
+ encapsulated within square brackets, an IPv4 address in dotted-
1003
+ decimal form, or a registered name. The host subcomponent is case-
1004
+ insensitive. The presence of a host subcomponent within a URI does
1005
+ not imply that the scheme requires access to the given host on the
1006
+ Internet. In many cases, the host syntax is used only for the sake
1007
+
1008
+
1009
+
1010
+ Berners-Lee, et al. Standards Track [Page 18]
1011
+
1012
+ RFC 3986 URI Generic Syntax January 2005
1013
+
1014
+
1015
+ of reusing the existing registration process created and deployed for
1016
+ DNS, thus obtaining a globally unique name without the cost of
1017
+ deploying another registry. However, such use comes with its own
1018
+ costs: domain name ownership may change over time for reasons not
1019
+ anticipated by the URI producer. In other cases, the data within the
1020
+ host component identifies a registered name that has nothing to do
1021
+ with an Internet host. We use the name "host" for the ABNF rule
1022
+ because that is its most common purpose, not its only purpose.
1023
+
1024
+ host = IP-literal / IPv4address / reg-name
1025
+
1026
+ The syntax rule for host is ambiguous because it does not completely
1027
+ distinguish between an IPv4address and a reg-name. In order to
1028
+ disambiguate the syntax, we apply the "first-match-wins" algorithm:
1029
+ If host matches the rule for IPv4address, then it should be
1030
+ considered an IPv4 address literal and not a reg-name. Although host
1031
+ is case-insensitive, producers and normalizers should use lowercase
1032
+ for registered names and hexadecimal addresses for the sake of
1033
+ uniformity, while only using uppercase letters for percent-encodings.
1034
+
1035
+ A host identified by an Internet Protocol literal address, version 6
1036
+ [RFC3513] or later, is distinguished by enclosing the IP literal
1037
+ within square brackets ("[" and "]"). This is the only place where
1038
+ square bracket characters are allowed in the URI syntax. In
1039
+ anticipation of future, as-yet-undefined IP literal address formats,
1040
+ an implementation may use an optional version flag to indicate such a
1041
+ format explicitly rather than rely on heuristic determination.
1042
+
1043
+ IP-literal = "[" ( IPv6address / IPvFuture ) "]"
1044
+
1045
+ IPvFuture = "v" 1*HEXDIG "." 1*( unreserved / sub-delims / ":" )
1046
+
1047
+ The version flag does not indicate the IP version; rather, it
1048
+ indicates future versions of the literal format. As such,
1049
+ implementations must not provide the version flag for the existing
1050
+ IPv4 and IPv6 literal address forms described below. If a URI
1051
+ containing an IP-literal that starts with "v" (case-insensitive),
1052
+ indicating that the version flag is present, is dereferenced by an
1053
+ application that does not know the meaning of that version flag, then
1054
+ the application should return an appropriate error for "address
1055
+ mechanism not supported".
1056
+
1057
+ A host identified by an IPv6 literal address is represented inside
1058
+ the square brackets without a preceding version flag. The ABNF
1059
+ provided here is a translation of the text definition of an IPv6
1060
+ literal address provided in [RFC3513]. This syntax does not support
1061
+ IPv6 scoped addressing zone identifiers.
1062
+
1063
+
1064
+
1065
+
1066
+ Berners-Lee, et al. Standards Track [Page 19]
1067
+
1068
+ RFC 3986 URI Generic Syntax January 2005
1069
+
1070
+
1071
+ A 128-bit IPv6 address is divided into eight 16-bit pieces. Each
1072
+ piece is represented numerically in case-insensitive hexadecimal,
1073
+ using one to four hexadecimal digits (leading zeroes are permitted).
1074
+ The eight encoded pieces are given most-significant first, separated
1075
+ by colon characters. Optionally, the least-significant two pieces
1076
+ may instead be represented in IPv4 address textual format. A
1077
+ sequence of one or more consecutive zero-valued 16-bit pieces within
1078
+ the address may be elided, omitting all their digits and leaving
1079
+ exactly two consecutive colons in their place to mark the elision.
1080
+
1081
+ IPv6address = 6( h16 ":" ) ls32
1082
+ / "::" 5( h16 ":" ) ls32
1083
+ / [ h16 ] "::" 4( h16 ":" ) ls32
1084
+ / [ *1( h16 ":" ) h16 ] "::" 3( h16 ":" ) ls32
1085
+ / [ *2( h16 ":" ) h16 ] "::" 2( h16 ":" ) ls32
1086
+ / [ *3( h16 ":" ) h16 ] "::" h16 ":" ls32
1087
+ / [ *4( h16 ":" ) h16 ] "::" ls32
1088
+ / [ *5( h16 ":" ) h16 ] "::" h16
1089
+ / [ *6( h16 ":" ) h16 ] "::"
1090
+
1091
+ ls32 = ( h16 ":" h16 ) / IPv4address
1092
+ ; least-significant 32 bits of address
1093
+
1094
+ h16 = 1*4HEXDIG
1095
+ ; 16 bits of address represented in hexadecimal
1096
+
1097
+ A host identified by an IPv4 literal address is represented in
1098
+ dotted-decimal notation (a sequence of four decimal numbers in the
1099
+ range 0 to 255, separated by "."), as described in [RFC1123] by
1100
+ reference to [RFC0952]. Note that other forms of dotted notation may
1101
+ be interpreted on some platforms, as described in Section 7.4, but
1102
+ only the dotted-decimal form of four octets is allowed by this
1103
+ grammar.
1104
+
1105
+ IPv4address = dec-octet "." dec-octet "." dec-octet "." dec-octet
1106
+
1107
+ dec-octet = DIGIT ; 0-9
1108
+ / %x31-39 DIGIT ; 10-99
1109
+ / "1" 2DIGIT ; 100-199
1110
+ / "2" %x30-34 DIGIT ; 200-249
1111
+ / "25" %x30-35 ; 250-255
1112
+
1113
+ A host identified by a registered name is a sequence of characters
1114
+ usually intended for lookup within a locally defined host or service
1115
+ name registry, though the URI's scheme-specific semantics may require
1116
+ that a specific registry (or fixed name table) be used instead. The
1117
+ most common name registry mechanism is the Domain Name System (DNS).
1118
+ A registered name intended for lookup in the DNS uses the syntax
1119
+
1120
+
1121
+
1122
+ Berners-Lee, et al. Standards Track [Page 20]
1123
+
1124
+ RFC 3986 URI Generic Syntax January 2005
1125
+
1126
+
1127
+ defined in Section 3.5 of [RFC1034] and Section 2.1 of [RFC1123].
1128
+ Such a name consists of a sequence of domain labels separated by ".",
1129
+ each domain label starting and ending with an alphanumeric character
1130
+ and possibly also containing "-" characters. The rightmost domain
1131
+ label of a fully qualified domain name in DNS may be followed by a
1132
+ single "." and should be if it is necessary to distinguish between
1133
+ the complete domain name and some local domain.
1134
+
1135
+ reg-name = *( unreserved / pct-encoded / sub-delims )
1136
+
1137
+ If the URI scheme defines a default for host, then that default
1138
+ applies when the host subcomponent is undefined or when the
1139
+ registered name is empty (zero length). For example, the "file" URI
1140
+ scheme is defined so that no authority, an empty host, and
1141
+ "localhost" all mean the end-user's machine, whereas the "http"
1142
+ scheme considers a missing authority or empty host invalid.
1143
+
1144
+ This specification does not mandate a particular registered name
1145
+ lookup technology and therefore does not restrict the syntax of reg-
1146
+ name beyond what is necessary for interoperability. Instead, it
1147
+ delegates the issue of registered name syntax conformance to the
1148
+ operating system of each application performing URI resolution, and
1149
+ that operating system decides what it will allow for the purpose of
1150
+ host identification. A URI resolution implementation might use DNS,
1151
+ host tables, yellow pages, NetInfo, WINS, or any other system for
1152
+ lookup of registered names. However, a globally scoped naming
1153
+ system, such as DNS fully qualified domain names, is necessary for
1154
+ URIs intended to have global scope. URI producers should use names
1155
+ that conform to the DNS syntax, even when use of DNS is not
1156
+ immediately apparent, and should limit these names to no more than
1157
+ 255 characters in length.
1158
+
1159
+ The reg-name syntax allows percent-encoded octets in order to
1160
+ represent non-ASCII registered names in a uniform way that is
1161
+ independent of the underlying name resolution technology. Non-ASCII
1162
+ characters must first be encoded according to UTF-8 [STD63], and then
1163
+ each octet of the corresponding UTF-8 sequence must be percent-
1164
+ encoded to be represented as URI characters. URI producing
1165
+ applications must not use percent-encoding in host unless it is used
1166
+ to represent a UTF-8 character sequence. When a non-ASCII registered
1167
+ name represents an internationalized domain name intended for
1168
+ resolution via the DNS, the name must be transformed to the IDNA
1169
+ encoding [RFC3490] prior to name lookup. URI producers should
1170
+ provide these registered names in the IDNA encoding, rather than a
1171
+ percent-encoding, if they wish to maximize interoperability with
1172
+ legacy URI resolvers.
1173
+
1174
+
1175
+
1176
+
1177
+
1178
+ Berners-Lee, et al. Standards Track [Page 21]
1179
+
1180
+ RFC 3986 URI Generic Syntax January 2005
1181
+
1182
+
1183
+ 3.2.3. Port
1184
+
1185
+ The port subcomponent of authority is designated by an optional port
1186
+ number in decimal following the host and delimited from it by a
1187
+ single colon (":") character.
1188
+
1189
+ port = *DIGIT
1190
+
1191
+ A scheme may define a default port. For example, the "http" scheme
1192
+ defines a default port of "80", corresponding to its reserved TCP
1193
+ port number. The type of port designated by the port number (e.g.,
1194
+ TCP, UDP, SCTP) is defined by the URI scheme. URI producers and
1195
+ normalizers should omit the port component and its ":" delimiter if
1196
+ port is empty or if its value would be the same as that of the
1197
+ scheme's default.
1198
+
1199
+ 3.3. Path
1200
+
1201
+ The path component contains data, usually organized in hierarchical
1202
+ form, that, along with data in the non-hierarchical query component
1203
+ (Section 3.4), serves to identify a resource within the scope of the
1204
+ URI's scheme and naming authority (if any). The path is terminated
1205
+ by the first question mark ("?") or number sign ("#") character, or
1206
+ by the end of the URI.
1207
+
1208
+ If a URI contains an authority component, then the path component
1209
+ must either be empty or begin with a slash ("/") character. If a URI
1210
+ does not contain an authority component, then the path cannot begin
1211
+ with two slash characters ("//"). In addition, a URI reference
1212
+ (Section 4.1) may be a relative-path reference, in which case the
1213
+ first path segment cannot contain a colon (":") character. The ABNF
1214
+ requires five separate rules to disambiguate these cases, only one of
1215
+ which will match the path substring within a given URI reference. We
1216
+ use the generic term "path component" to describe the URI substring
1217
+ matched by the parser to one of these rules.
1218
+
1219
+ path = path-abempty ; begins with "/" or is empty
1220
+ / path-absolute ; begins with "/" but not "//"
1221
+ / path-noscheme ; begins with a non-colon segment
1222
+ / path-rootless ; begins with a segment
1223
+ / path-empty ; zero characters
1224
+
1225
+ path-abempty = *( "/" segment )
1226
+ path-absolute = "/" [ segment-nz *( "/" segment ) ]
1227
+ path-noscheme = segment-nz-nc *( "/" segment )
1228
+ path-rootless = segment-nz *( "/" segment )
1229
+ path-empty = 0<pchar>
1230
+
1231
+
1232
+
1233
+
1234
+ Berners-Lee, et al. Standards Track [Page 22]
1235
+
1236
+ RFC 3986 URI Generic Syntax January 2005
1237
+
1238
+
1239
+ segment = *pchar
1240
+ segment-nz = 1*pchar
1241
+ segment-nz-nc = 1*( unreserved / pct-encoded / sub-delims / "@" )
1242
+ ; non-zero-length segment without any colon ":"
1243
+
1244
+ pchar = unreserved / pct-encoded / sub-delims / ":" / "@"
1245
+
1246
+ A path consists of a sequence of path segments separated by a slash
1247
+ ("/") character. A path is always defined for a URI, though the
1248
+ defined path may be empty (zero length). Use of the slash character
1249
+ to indicate hierarchy is only required when a URI will be used as the
1250
+ context for relative references. For example, the URI
1251
+ <mailto:fred@example.com> has a path of "fred@example.com", whereas
1252
+ the URI <foo://info.example.com?fred> has an empty path.
1253
+
1254
+ The path segments "." and "..", also known as dot-segments, are
1255
+ defined for relative reference within the path name hierarchy. They
1256
+ are intended for use at the beginning of a relative-path reference
1257
+ (Section 4.2) to indicate relative position within the hierarchical
1258
+ tree of names. This is similar to their role within some operating
1259
+ systems' file directory structures to indicate the current directory
1260
+ and parent directory, respectively. However, unlike in a file
1261
+ system, these dot-segments are only interpreted within the URI path
1262
+ hierarchy and are removed as part of the resolution process (Section
1263
+ 5.2).
1264
+
1265
+ Aside from dot-segments in hierarchical paths, a path segment is
1266
+ considered opaque by the generic syntax. URI producing applications
1267
+ often use the reserved characters allowed in a segment to delimit
1268
+ scheme-specific or dereference-handler-specific subcomponents. For
1269
+ example, the semicolon (";") and equals ("=") reserved characters are
1270
+ often used to delimit parameters and parameter values applicable to
1271
+ that segment. The comma (",") reserved character is often used for
1272
+ similar purposes. For example, one URI producer might use a segment
1273
+ such as "name;v=1.1" to indicate a reference to version 1.1 of
1274
+ "name", whereas another might use a segment such as "name,1.1" to
1275
+ indicate the same. Parameter types may be defined by scheme-specific
1276
+ semantics, but in most cases the syntax of a parameter is specific to
1277
+ the implementation of the URI's dereferencing algorithm.
1278
+
1279
+ 3.4. Query
1280
+
1281
+ The query component contains non-hierarchical data that, along with
1282
+ data in the path component (Section 3.3), serves to identify a
1283
+ resource within the scope of the URI's scheme and naming authority
1284
+ (if any). The query component is indicated by the first question
1285
+ mark ("?") character and terminated by a number sign ("#") character
1286
+ or by the end of the URI.
1287
+
1288
+
1289
+
1290
+ Berners-Lee, et al. Standards Track [Page 23]
1291
+
1292
+ RFC 3986 URI Generic Syntax January 2005
1293
+
1294
+
1295
+ query = *( pchar / "/" / "?" )
1296
+
1297
+ The characters slash ("/") and question mark ("?") may represent data
1298
+ within the query component. Beware that some older, erroneous
1299
+ implementations may not handle such data correctly when it is used as
1300
+ the base URI for relative references (Section 5.1), apparently
1301
+ because they fail to distinguish query data from path data when
1302
+ looking for hierarchical separators. However, as query components
1303
+ are often used to carry identifying information in the form of
1304
+ "key=value" pairs and one frequently used value is a reference to
1305
+ another URI, it is sometimes better for usability to avoid percent-
1306
+ encoding those characters.
1307
+
1308
+ 3.5. Fragment
1309
+
1310
+ The fragment identifier component of a URI allows indirect
1311
+ identification of a secondary resource by reference to a primary
1312
+ resource and additional identifying information. The identified
1313
+ secondary resource may be some portion or subset of the primary
1314
+ resource, some view on representations of the primary resource, or
1315
+ some other resource defined or described by those representations. A
1316
+ fragment identifier component is indicated by the presence of a
1317
+ number sign ("#") character and terminated by the end of the URI.
1318
+
1319
+ fragment = *( pchar / "/" / "?" )
1320
+
1321
+ The semantics of a fragment identifier are defined by the set of
1322
+ representations that might result from a retrieval action on the
1323
+ primary resource. The fragment's format and resolution is therefore
1324
+ dependent on the media type [RFC2046] of a potentially retrieved
1325
+ representation, even though such a retrieval is only performed if the
1326
+ URI is dereferenced. If no such representation exists, then the
1327
+ semantics of the fragment are considered unknown and are effectively
1328
+ unconstrained. Fragment identifier semantics are independent of the
1329
+ URI scheme and thus cannot be redefined by scheme specifications.
1330
+
1331
+ Individual media types may define their own restrictions on or
1332
+ structures within the fragment identifier syntax for specifying
1333
+ different types of subsets, views, or external references that are
1334
+ identifiable as secondary resources by that media type. If the
1335
+ primary resource has multiple representations, as is often the case
1336
+ for resources whose representation is selected based on attributes of
1337
+ the retrieval request (a.k.a., content negotiation), then whatever is
1338
+ identified by the fragment should be consistent across all of those
1339
+ representations. Each representation should either define the
1340
+ fragment so that it corresponds to the same secondary resource,
1341
+ regardless of how it is represented, or should leave the fragment
1342
+ undefined (i.e., not found).
1343
+
1344
+
1345
+
1346
+ Berners-Lee, et al. Standards Track [Page 24]
1347
+
1348
+ RFC 3986 URI Generic Syntax January 2005
1349
+
1350
+
1351
+ As with any URI, use of a fragment identifier component does not
1352
+ imply that a retrieval action will take place. A URI with a fragment
1353
+ identifier may be used to refer to the secondary resource without any
1354
+ implication that the primary resource is accessible or will ever be
1355
+ accessed.
1356
+
1357
+ Fragment identifiers have a special role in information retrieval
1358
+ systems as the primary form of client-side indirect referencing,
1359
+ allowing an author to specifically identify aspects of an existing
1360
+ resource that are only indirectly provided by the resource owner. As
1361
+ such, the fragment identifier is not used in the scheme-specific
1362
+ processing of a URI; instead, the fragment identifier is separated
1363
+ from the rest of the URI prior to a dereference, and thus the
1364
+ identifying information within the fragment itself is dereferenced
1365
+ solely by the user agent, regardless of the URI scheme. Although
1366
+ this separate handling is often perceived to be a loss of
1367
+ information, particularly for accurate redirection of references as
1368
+ resources move over time, it also serves to prevent information
1369
+ providers from denying reference authors the right to refer to
1370
+ information within a resource selectively. Indirect referencing also
1371
+ provides additional flexibility and extensibility to systems that use
1372
+ URIs, as new media types are easier to define and deploy than new
1373
+ schemes of identification.
1374
+
1375
+ The characters slash ("/") and question mark ("?") are allowed to
1376
+ represent data within the fragment identifier. Beware that some
1377
+ older, erroneous implementations may not handle this data correctly
1378
+ when it is used as the base URI for relative references (Section
1379
+ 5.1).
1380
+
1381
+ 4. Usage
1382
+
1383
+ When applications make reference to a URI, they do not always use the
1384
+ full form of reference defined by the "URI" syntax rule. To save
1385
+ space and take advantage of hierarchical locality, many Internet
1386
+ protocol elements and media type formats allow an abbreviation of a
1387
+ URI, whereas others restrict the syntax to a particular form of URI.
1388
+ We define the most common forms of reference syntax in this
1389
+ specification because they impact and depend upon the design of the
1390
+ generic syntax, requiring a uniform parsing algorithm in order to be
1391
+ interpreted consistently.
1392
+
1393
+ 4.1. URI Reference
1394
+
1395
+ URI-reference is used to denote the most common usage of a resource
1396
+ identifier.
1397
+
1398
+ URI-reference = URI / relative-ref
1399
+
1400
+
1401
+
1402
+ Berners-Lee, et al. Standards Track [Page 25]
1403
+
1404
+ RFC 3986 URI Generic Syntax January 2005
1405
+
1406
+
1407
+ A URI-reference is either a URI or a relative reference. If the
1408
+ URI-reference's prefix does not match the syntax of a scheme followed
1409
+ by its colon separator, then the URI-reference is a relative
1410
+ reference.
1411
+
1412
+ A URI-reference is typically parsed first into the five URI
1413
+ components, in order to determine what components are present and
1414
+ whether the reference is relative. Then, each component is parsed
1415
+ for its subparts and their validation. The ABNF of URI-reference,
1416
+ along with the "first-match-wins" disambiguation rule, is sufficient
1417
+ to define a validating parser for the generic syntax. Readers
1418
+ familiar with regular expressions should see Appendix B for an
1419
+ example of a non-validating URI-reference parser that will take any
1420
+ given string and extract the URI components.
1421
+
1422
+ 4.2. Relative Reference
1423
+
1424
+ A relative reference takes advantage of the hierarchical syntax
1425
+ (Section 1.2.3) to express a URI reference relative to the name space
1426
+ of another hierarchical URI.
1427
+
1428
+ relative-ref = relative-part [ "?" query ] [ "#" fragment ]
1429
+
1430
+ relative-part = "//" authority path-abempty
1431
+ / path-absolute
1432
+ / path-noscheme
1433
+ / path-empty
1434
+
1435
+ The URI referred to by a relative reference, also known as the target
1436
+ URI, is obtained by applying the reference resolution algorithm of
1437
+ Section 5.
1438
+
1439
+ A relative reference that begins with two slash characters is termed
1440
+ a network-path reference; such references are rarely used. A
1441
+ relative reference that begins with a single slash character is
1442
+ termed an absolute-path reference. A relative reference that does
1443
+ not begin with a slash character is termed a relative-path reference.
1444
+
1445
+ A path segment that contains a colon character (e.g., "this:that")
1446
+ cannot be used as the first segment of a relative-path reference, as
1447
+ it would be mistaken for a scheme name. Such a segment must be
1448
+ preceded by a dot-segment (e.g., "./this:that") to make a relative-
1449
+ path reference.
1450
+
1451
+
1452
+
1453
+
1454
+
1455
+
1456
+
1457
+
1458
+ Berners-Lee, et al. Standards Track [Page 26]
1459
+
1460
+ RFC 3986 URI Generic Syntax January 2005
1461
+
1462
+
1463
+ 4.3. Absolute URI
1464
+
1465
+ Some protocol elements allow only the absolute form of a URI without
1466
+ a fragment identifier. For example, defining a base URI for later
1467
+ use by relative references calls for an absolute-URI syntax rule that
1468
+ does not allow a fragment.
1469
+
1470
+ absolute-URI = scheme ":" hier-part [ "?" query ]
1471
+
1472
+ URI scheme specifications must define their own syntax so that all
1473
+ strings matching their scheme-specific syntax will also match the
1474
+ <absolute-URI> grammar. Scheme specifications will not define
1475
+ fragment identifier syntax or usage, regardless of its applicability
1476
+ to resources identifiable via that scheme, as fragment identification
1477
+ is orthogonal to scheme definition. However, scheme specifications
1478
+ are encouraged to include a wide range of examples, including
1479
+ examples that show use of the scheme's URIs with fragment identifiers
1480
+ when such usage is appropriate.
1481
+
1482
+ 4.4. Same-Document Reference
1483
+
1484
+ When a URI reference refers to a URI that is, aside from its fragment
1485
+ component (if any), identical to the base URI (Section 5.1), that
1486
+ reference is called a "same-document" reference. The most frequent
1487
+ examples of same-document references are relative references that are
1488
+ empty or include only the number sign ("#") separator followed by a
1489
+ fragment identifier.
1490
+
1491
+ When a same-document reference is dereferenced for a retrieval
1492
+ action, the target of that reference is defined to be within the same
1493
+ entity (representation, document, or message) as the reference;
1494
+ therefore, a dereference should not result in a new retrieval action.
1495
+
1496
+ Normalization of the base and target URIs prior to their comparison,
1497
+ as described in Sections 6.2.2 and 6.2.3, is allowed but rarely
1498
+ performed in practice. Normalization may increase the set of same-
1499
+ document references, which may be of benefit to some caching
1500
+ applications. As such, reference authors should not assume that a
1501
+ slightly different, though equivalent, reference URI will (or will
1502
+ not) be interpreted as a same-document reference by any given
1503
+ application.
1504
+
1505
+ 4.5. Suffix Reference
1506
+
1507
+ The URI syntax is designed for unambiguous reference to resources and
1508
+ extensibility via the URI scheme. However, as URI identification and
1509
+ usage have become commonplace, traditional media (television, radio,
1510
+ newspapers, billboards, etc.) have increasingly used a suffix of the
1511
+
1512
+
1513
+
1514
+ Berners-Lee, et al. Standards Track [Page 27]
1515
+
1516
+ RFC 3986 URI Generic Syntax January 2005
1517
+
1518
+
1519
+ URI as a reference, consisting of only the authority and path
1520
+ portions of the URI, such as
1521
+
1522
+ www.w3.org/Addressing/
1523
+
1524
+ or simply a DNS registered name on its own. Such references are
1525
+ primarily intended for human interpretation rather than for machines,
1526
+ with the assumption that context-based heuristics are sufficient to
1527
+ complete the URI (e.g., most registered names beginning with "www"
1528
+ are likely to have a URI prefix of "http://"). Although there is no
1529
+ standard set of heuristics for disambiguating a URI suffix, many
1530
+ client implementations allow them to be entered by the user and
1531
+ heuristically resolved.
1532
+
1533
+ Although this practice of using suffix references is common, it
1534
+ should be avoided whenever possible and should never be used in
1535
+ situations where long-term references are expected. The heuristics
1536
+ noted above will change over time, particularly when a new URI scheme
1537
+ becomes popular, and are often incorrect when used out of context.
1538
+ Furthermore, they can lead to security issues along the lines of
1539
+ those described in [RFC1535].
1540
+
1541
+ As a URI suffix has the same syntax as a relative-path reference, a
1542
+ suffix reference cannot be used in contexts where a relative
1543
+ reference is expected. As a result, suffix references are limited to
1544
+ places where there is no defined base URI, such as dialog boxes and
1545
+ off-line advertisements.
1546
+
1547
+ 5. Reference Resolution
1548
+
1549
+ This section defines the process of resolving a URI reference within
1550
+ a context that allows relative references so that the result is a
1551
+ string matching the <URI> syntax rule of Section 3.
1552
+
1553
+ 5.1. Establishing a Base URI
1554
+
1555
+ The term "relative" implies that a "base URI" exists against which
1556
+ the relative reference is applied. Aside from fragment-only
1557
+ references (Section 4.4), relative references are only usable when a
1558
+ base URI is known. A base URI must be established by the parser
1559
+ prior to parsing URI references that might be relative. A base URI
1560
+ must conform to the <absolute-URI> syntax rule (Section 4.3). If the
1561
+ base URI is obtained from a URI reference, then that reference must
1562
+ be converted to absolute form and stripped of any fragment component
1563
+ prior to its use as a base URI.
1564
+
1565
+
1566
+
1567
+
1568
+
1569
+
1570
+ Berners-Lee, et al. Standards Track [Page 28]
1571
+
1572
+ RFC 3986 URI Generic Syntax January 2005
1573
+
1574
+
1575
+ The base URI of a reference can be established in one of four ways,
1576
+ discussed below in order of precedence. The order of precedence can
1577
+ be thought of in terms of layers, where the innermost defined base
1578
+ URI has the highest precedence. This can be visualized graphically
1579
+ as follows:
1580
+
1581
+ .----------------------------------------------------------.
1582
+ | .----------------------------------------------------. |
1583
+ | | .----------------------------------------------. | |
1584
+ | | | .----------------------------------------. | | |
1585
+ | | | | .----------------------------------. | | | |
1586
+ | | | | | <relative-reference> | | | | |
1587
+ | | | | `----------------------------------' | | | |
1588
+ | | | | (5.1.1) Base URI embedded in content | | | |
1589
+ | | | `----------------------------------------' | | |
1590
+ | | | (5.1.2) Base URI of the encapsulating entity | | |
1591
+ | | | (message, representation, or none) | | |
1592
+ | | `----------------------------------------------' | |
1593
+ | | (5.1.3) URI used to retrieve the entity | |
1594
+ | `----------------------------------------------------' |
1595
+ | (5.1.4) Default Base URI (application-dependent) |
1596
+ `----------------------------------------------------------'
1597
+
1598
+ 5.1.1. Base URI Embedded in Content
1599
+
1600
+ Within certain media types, a base URI for relative references can be
1601
+ embedded within the content itself so that it can be readily obtained
1602
+ by a parser. This can be useful for descriptive documents, such as
1603
+ tables of contents, which may be transmitted to others through
1604
+ protocols other than their usual retrieval context (e.g., email or
1605
+ USENET news).
1606
+
1607
+ It is beyond the scope of this specification to specify how, for each
1608
+ media type, a base URI can be embedded. The appropriate syntax, when
1609
+ available, is described by the data format specification associated
1610
+ with each media type.
1611
+
1612
+ 5.1.2. Base URI from the Encapsulating Entity
1613
+
1614
+ If no base URI is embedded, the base URI is defined by the
1615
+ representation's retrieval context. For a document that is enclosed
1616
+ within another entity, such as a message or archive, the retrieval
1617
+ context is that entity. Thus, the default base URI of a
1618
+ representation is the base URI of the entity in which the
1619
+ representation is encapsulated.
1620
+
1621
+
1622
+
1623
+
1624
+
1625
+
1626
+ Berners-Lee, et al. Standards Track [Page 29]
1627
+
1628
+ RFC 3986 URI Generic Syntax January 2005
1629
+
1630
+
1631
+ A mechanism for embedding a base URI within MIME container types
1632
+ (e.g., the message and multipart types) is defined by MHTML
1633
+ [RFC2557]. Protocols that do not use the MIME message header syntax,
1634
+ but that do allow some form of tagged metadata to be included within
1635
+ messages, may define their own syntax for defining a base URI as part
1636
+ of a message.
1637
+
1638
+ 5.1.3. Base URI from the Retrieval URI
1639
+
1640
+ If no base URI is embedded and the representation is not encapsulated
1641
+ within some other entity, then, if a URI was used to retrieve the
1642
+ representation, that URI shall be considered the base URI. Note that
1643
+ if the retrieval was the result of a redirected request, the last URI
1644
+ used (i.e., the URI that resulted in the actual retrieval of the
1645
+ representation) is the base URI.
1646
+
1647
+ 5.1.4. Default Base URI
1648
+
1649
+ If none of the conditions described above apply, then the base URI is
1650
+ defined by the context of the application. As this definition is
1651
+ necessarily application-dependent, failing to define a base URI by
1652
+ using one of the other methods may result in the same content being
1653
+ interpreted differently by different types of applications.
1654
+
1655
+ A sender of a representation containing relative references is
1656
+ responsible for ensuring that a base URI for those references can be
1657
+ established. Aside from fragment-only references, relative
1658
+ references can only be used reliably in situations where the base URI
1659
+ is well defined.
1660
+
1661
+ 5.2. Relative Resolution
1662
+
1663
+ This section describes an algorithm for converting a URI reference
1664
+ that might be relative to a given base URI into the parsed components
1665
+ of the reference's target. The components can then be recomposed, as
1666
+ described in Section 5.3, to form the target URI. This algorithm
1667
+ provides definitive results that can be used to test the output of
1668
+ other implementations. Applications may implement relative reference
1669
+ resolution by using some other algorithm, provided that the results
1670
+ match what would be given by this one.
1671
+
1672
+
1673
+
1674
+
1675
+
1676
+
1677
+
1678
+
1679
+
1680
+
1681
+
1682
+ Berners-Lee, et al. Standards Track [Page 30]
1683
+
1684
+ RFC 3986 URI Generic Syntax January 2005
1685
+
1686
+
1687
+ 5.2.1. Pre-parse the Base URI
1688
+
1689
+ The base URI (Base) is established according to the procedure of
1690
+ Section 5.1 and parsed into the five main components described in
1691
+ Section 3. Note that only the scheme component is required to be
1692
+ present in a base URI; the other components may be empty or
1693
+ undefined. A component is undefined if its associated delimiter does
1694
+ not appear in the URI reference; the path component is never
1695
+ undefined, though it may be empty.
1696
+
1697
+ Normalization of the base URI, as described in Sections 6.2.2 and
1698
+ 6.2.3, is optional. A URI reference must be transformed to its
1699
+ target URI before it can be normalized.
1700
+
1701
+ 5.2.2. Transform References
1702
+
1703
+ For each URI reference (R), the following pseudocode describes an
1704
+ algorithm for transforming R into its target URI (T):
1705
+
1706
+ -- The URI reference is parsed into the five URI components
1707
+ --
1708
+ (R.scheme, R.authority, R.path, R.query, R.fragment) = parse(R);
1709
+
1710
+ -- A non-strict parser may ignore a scheme in the reference
1711
+ -- if it is identical to the base URI's scheme.
1712
+ --
1713
+ if ((not strict) and (R.scheme == Base.scheme)) then
1714
+ undefine(R.scheme);
1715
+ endif;
1716
+
1717
+
1718
+
1719
+
1720
+
1721
+
1722
+
1723
+
1724
+
1725
+
1726
+
1727
+
1728
+
1729
+
1730
+
1731
+
1732
+
1733
+
1734
+
1735
+
1736
+
1737
+
1738
+ Berners-Lee, et al. Standards Track [Page 31]
1739
+
1740
+ RFC 3986 URI Generic Syntax January 2005
1741
+
1742
+
1743
+ if defined(R.scheme) then
1744
+ T.scheme = R.scheme;
1745
+ T.authority = R.authority;
1746
+ T.path = remove_dot_segments(R.path);
1747
+ T.query = R.query;
1748
+ else
1749
+ if defined(R.authority) then
1750
+ T.authority = R.authority;
1751
+ T.path = remove_dot_segments(R.path);
1752
+ T.query = R.query;
1753
+ else
1754
+ if (R.path == "") then
1755
+ T.path = Base.path;
1756
+ if defined(R.query) then
1757
+ T.query = R.query;
1758
+ else
1759
+ T.query = Base.query;
1760
+ endif;
1761
+ else
1762
+ if (R.path starts-with "/") then
1763
+ T.path = remove_dot_segments(R.path);
1764
+ else
1765
+ T.path = merge(Base.path, R.path);
1766
+ T.path = remove_dot_segments(T.path);
1767
+ endif;
1768
+ T.query = R.query;
1769
+ endif;
1770
+ T.authority = Base.authority;
1771
+ endif;
1772
+ T.scheme = Base.scheme;
1773
+ endif;
1774
+
1775
+ T.fragment = R.fragment;
1776
+
1777
+ 5.2.3. Merge Paths
1778
+
1779
+ The pseudocode above refers to a "merge" routine for merging a
1780
+ relative-path reference with the path of the base URI. This is
1781
+ accomplished as follows:
1782
+
1783
+ o If the base URI has a defined authority component and an empty
1784
+ path, then return a string consisting of "/" concatenated with the
1785
+ reference's path; otherwise,
1786
+
1787
+
1788
+
1789
+
1790
+
1791
+
1792
+
1793
+
1794
+ Berners-Lee, et al. Standards Track [Page 32]
1795
+
1796
+ RFC 3986 URI Generic Syntax January 2005
1797
+
1798
+
1799
+ o return a string consisting of the reference's path component
1800
+ appended to all but the last segment of the base URI's path (i.e.,
1801
+ excluding any characters after the right-most "/" in the base URI
1802
+ path, or excluding the entire base URI path if it does not contain
1803
+ any "/" characters).
1804
+
1805
+ 5.2.4. Remove Dot Segments
1806
+
1807
+ The pseudocode also refers to a "remove_dot_segments" routine for
1808
+ interpreting and removing the special "." and ".." complete path
1809
+ segments from a referenced path. This is done after the path is
1810
+ extracted from a reference, whether or not the path was relative, in
1811
+ order to remove any invalid or extraneous dot-segments prior to
1812
+ forming the target URI. Although there are many ways to accomplish
1813
+ this removal process, we describe a simple method using two string
1814
+ buffers.
1815
+
1816
+ 1. The input buffer is initialized with the now-appended path
1817
+ components and the output buffer is initialized to the empty
1818
+ string.
1819
+
1820
+ 2. While the input buffer is not empty, loop as follows:
1821
+
1822
+ A. If the input buffer begins with a prefix of "../" or "./",
1823
+ then remove that prefix from the input buffer; otherwise,
1824
+
1825
+ B. if the input buffer begins with a prefix of "/./" or "/.",
1826
+ where "." is a complete path segment, then replace that
1827
+ prefix with "/" in the input buffer; otherwise,
1828
+
1829
+ C. if the input buffer begins with a prefix of "/../" or "/..",
1830
+ where ".." is a complete path segment, then replace that
1831
+ prefix with "/" in the input buffer and remove the last
1832
+ segment and its preceding "/" (if any) from the output
1833
+ buffer; otherwise,
1834
+
1835
+ D. if the input buffer consists only of "." or "..", then remove
1836
+ that from the input buffer; otherwise,
1837
+
1838
+ E. move the first path segment in the input buffer to the end of
1839
+ the output buffer, including the initial "/" character (if
1840
+ any) and any subsequent characters up to, but not including,
1841
+ the next "/" character or the end of the input buffer.
1842
+
1843
+ 3. Finally, the output buffer is returned as the result of
1844
+ remove_dot_segments.
1845
+
1846
+
1847
+
1848
+
1849
+
1850
+ Berners-Lee, et al. Standards Track [Page 33]
1851
+
1852
+ RFC 3986 URI Generic Syntax January 2005
1853
+
1854
+
1855
+ Note that dot-segments are intended for use in URI references to
1856
+ express an identifier relative to the hierarchy of names in the base
1857
+ URI. The remove_dot_segments algorithm respects that hierarchy by
1858
+ removing extra dot-segments rather than treat them as an error or
1859
+ leaving them to be misinterpreted by dereference implementations.
1860
+
1861
+ The following illustrates how the above steps are applied for two
1862
+ examples of merged paths, showing the state of the two buffers after
1863
+ each step.
1864
+
1865
+ STEP OUTPUT BUFFER INPUT BUFFER
1866
+
1867
+ 1 : /a/b/c/./../../g
1868
+ 2E: /a /b/c/./../../g
1869
+ 2E: /a/b /c/./../../g
1870
+ 2E: /a/b/c /./../../g
1871
+ 2B: /a/b/c /../../g
1872
+ 2C: /a/b /../g
1873
+ 2C: /a /g
1874
+ 2E: /a/g
1875
+
1876
+ STEP OUTPUT BUFFER INPUT BUFFER
1877
+
1878
+ 1 : mid/content=5/../6
1879
+ 2E: mid /content=5/../6
1880
+ 2E: mid/content=5 /../6
1881
+ 2C: mid /6
1882
+ 2E: mid/6
1883
+
1884
+ Some applications may find it more efficient to implement the
1885
+ remove_dot_segments algorithm by using two segment stacks rather than
1886
+ strings.
1887
+
1888
+ Note: Beware that some older, erroneous implementations will fail
1889
+ to separate a reference's query component from its path component
1890
+ prior to merging the base and reference paths, resulting in an
1891
+ interoperability failure if the query component contains the
1892
+ strings "/../" or "/./".
1893
+
1894
+
1895
+
1896
+
1897
+
1898
+
1899
+
1900
+
1901
+
1902
+
1903
+
1904
+
1905
+
1906
+ Berners-Lee, et al. Standards Track [Page 34]
1907
+
1908
+ RFC 3986 URI Generic Syntax January 2005
1909
+
1910
+
1911
+ 5.3. Component Recomposition
1912
+
1913
+ Parsed URI components can be recomposed to obtain the corresponding
1914
+ URI reference string. Using pseudocode, this would be:
1915
+
1916
+ result = ""
1917
+
1918
+ if defined(scheme) then
1919
+ append scheme to result;
1920
+ append ":" to result;
1921
+ endif;
1922
+
1923
+ if defined(authority) then
1924
+ append "//" to result;
1925
+ append authority to result;
1926
+ endif;
1927
+
1928
+ append path to result;
1929
+
1930
+ if defined(query) then
1931
+ append "?" to result;
1932
+ append query to result;
1933
+ endif;
1934
+
1935
+ if defined(fragment) then
1936
+ append "#" to result;
1937
+ append fragment to result;
1938
+ endif;
1939
+
1940
+ return result;
1941
+
1942
+ Note that we are careful to preserve the distinction between a
1943
+ component that is undefined, meaning that its separator was not
1944
+ present in the reference, and a component that is empty, meaning that
1945
+ the separator was present and was immediately followed by the next
1946
+ component separator or the end of the reference.
1947
+
1948
+ 5.4. Reference Resolution Examples
1949
+
1950
+ Within a representation with a well defined base URI of
1951
+
1952
+ http://a/b/c/d;p?q
1953
+
1954
+ a relative reference is transformed to its target URI as follows.
1955
+
1956
+
1957
+
1958
+
1959
+
1960
+
1961
+
1962
+ Berners-Lee, et al. Standards Track [Page 35]
1963
+
1964
+ RFC 3986 URI Generic Syntax January 2005
1965
+
1966
+
1967
+ 5.4.1. Normal Examples
1968
+
1969
+ "g:h" = "g:h"
1970
+ "g" = "http://a/b/c/g"
1971
+ "./g" = "http://a/b/c/g"
1972
+ "g/" = "http://a/b/c/g/"
1973
+ "/g" = "http://a/g"
1974
+ "//g" = "http://g"
1975
+ "?y" = "http://a/b/c/d;p?y"
1976
+ "g?y" = "http://a/b/c/g?y"
1977
+ "#s" = "http://a/b/c/d;p?q#s"
1978
+ "g#s" = "http://a/b/c/g#s"
1979
+ "g?y#s" = "http://a/b/c/g?y#s"
1980
+ ";x" = "http://a/b/c/;x"
1981
+ "g;x" = "http://a/b/c/g;x"
1982
+ "g;x?y#s" = "http://a/b/c/g;x?y#s"
1983
+ "" = "http://a/b/c/d;p?q"
1984
+ "." = "http://a/b/c/"
1985
+ "./" = "http://a/b/c/"
1986
+ ".." = "http://a/b/"
1987
+ "../" = "http://a/b/"
1988
+ "../g" = "http://a/b/g"
1989
+ "../.." = "http://a/"
1990
+ "../../" = "http://a/"
1991
+ "../../g" = "http://a/g"
1992
+
1993
+ 5.4.2. Abnormal Examples
1994
+
1995
+ Although the following abnormal examples are unlikely to occur in
1996
+ normal practice, all URI parsers should be capable of resolving them
1997
+ consistently. Each example uses the same base as that above.
1998
+
1999
+ Parsers must be careful in handling cases where there are more ".."
2000
+ segments in a relative-path reference than there are hierarchical
2001
+ levels in the base URI's path. Note that the ".." syntax cannot be
2002
+ used to change the authority component of a URI.
2003
+
2004
+ "../../../g" = "http://a/g"
2005
+ "../../../../g" = "http://a/g"
2006
+
2007
+
2008
+
2009
+
2010
+
2011
+
2012
+
2013
+
2014
+
2015
+
2016
+
2017
+
2018
+ Berners-Lee, et al. Standards Track [Page 36]
2019
+
2020
+ RFC 3986 URI Generic Syntax January 2005
2021
+
2022
+
2023
+ Similarly, parsers must remove the dot-segments "." and ".." when
2024
+ they are complete components of a path, but not when they are only
2025
+ part of a segment.
2026
+
2027
+ "/./g" = "http://a/g"
2028
+ "/../g" = "http://a/g"
2029
+ "g." = "http://a/b/c/g."
2030
+ ".g" = "http://a/b/c/.g"
2031
+ "g.." = "http://a/b/c/g.."
2032
+ "..g" = "http://a/b/c/..g"
2033
+
2034
+ Less likely are cases where the relative reference uses unnecessary
2035
+ or nonsensical forms of the "." and ".." complete path segments.
2036
+
2037
+ "./../g" = "http://a/b/g"
2038
+ "./g/." = "http://a/b/c/g/"
2039
+ "g/./h" = "http://a/b/c/g/h"
2040
+ "g/../h" = "http://a/b/c/h"
2041
+ "g;x=1/./y" = "http://a/b/c/g;x=1/y"
2042
+ "g;x=1/../y" = "http://a/b/c/y"
2043
+
2044
+ Some applications fail to separate the reference's query and/or
2045
+ fragment components from the path component before merging it with
2046
+ the base path and removing dot-segments. This error is rarely
2047
+ noticed, as typical usage of a fragment never includes the hierarchy
2048
+ ("/") character and the query component is not normally used within
2049
+ relative references.
2050
+
2051
+ "g?y/./x" = "http://a/b/c/g?y/./x"
2052
+ "g?y/../x" = "http://a/b/c/g?y/../x"
2053
+ "g#s/./x" = "http://a/b/c/g#s/./x"
2054
+ "g#s/../x" = "http://a/b/c/g#s/../x"
2055
+
2056
+ Some parsers allow the scheme name to be present in a relative
2057
+ reference if it is the same as the base URI scheme. This is
2058
+ considered to be a loophole in prior specifications of partial URI
2059
+ [RFC1630]. Its use should be avoided but is allowed for backward
2060
+ compatibility.
2061
+
2062
+ "http:g" = "http:g" ; for strict parsers
2063
+ / "http://a/b/c/g" ; for backward compatibility
2064
+
2065
+
2066
+
2067
+
2068
+
2069
+
2070
+
2071
+
2072
+
2073
+
2074
+ Berners-Lee, et al. Standards Track [Page 37]
2075
+
2076
+ RFC 3986 URI Generic Syntax January 2005
2077
+
2078
+
2079
+ 6. Normalization and Comparison
2080
+
2081
+ One of the most common operations on URIs is simple comparison:
2082
+ determining whether two URIs are equivalent without using the URIs to
2083
+ access their respective resource(s). A comparison is performed every
2084
+ time a response cache is accessed, a browser checks its history to
2085
+ color a link, or an XML parser processes tags within a namespace.
2086
+ Extensive normalization prior to comparison of URIs is often used by
2087
+ spiders and indexing engines to prune a search space or to reduce
2088
+ duplication of request actions and response storage.
2089
+
2090
+ URI comparison is performed for some particular purpose. Protocols
2091
+ or implementations that compare URIs for different purposes will
2092
+ often be subject to differing design trade-offs in regards to how
2093
+ much effort should be spent in reducing aliased identifiers. This
2094
+ section describes various methods that may be used to compare URIs,
2095
+ the trade-offs between them, and the types of applications that might
2096
+ use them.
2097
+
2098
+ 6.1. Equivalence
2099
+
2100
+ Because URIs exist to identify resources, presumably they should be
2101
+ considered equivalent when they identify the same resource. However,
2102
+ this definition of equivalence is not of much practical use, as there
2103
+ is no way for an implementation to compare two resources unless it
2104
+ has full knowledge or control of them. For this reason,
2105
+ determination of equivalence or difference of URIs is based on string
2106
+ comparison, perhaps augmented by reference to additional rules
2107
+ provided by URI scheme definitions. We use the terms "different" and
2108
+ "equivalent" to describe the possible outcomes of such comparisons,
2109
+ but there are many application-dependent versions of equivalence.
2110
+
2111
+ Even though it is possible to determine that two URIs are equivalent,
2112
+ URI comparison is not sufficient to determine whether two URIs
2113
+ identify different resources. For example, an owner of two different
2114
+ domain names could decide to serve the same resource from both,
2115
+ resulting in two different URIs. Therefore, comparison methods are
2116
+ designed to minimize false negatives while strictly avoiding false
2117
+ positives.
2118
+
2119
+ In testing for equivalence, applications should not directly compare
2120
+ relative references; the references should be converted to their
2121
+ respective target URIs before comparison. When URIs are compared to
2122
+ select (or avoid) a network action, such as retrieval of a
2123
+ representation, fragment components (if any) should be excluded from
2124
+ the comparison.
2125
+
2126
+
2127
+
2128
+
2129
+
2130
+ Berners-Lee, et al. Standards Track [Page 38]
2131
+
2132
+ RFC 3986 URI Generic Syntax January 2005
2133
+
2134
+
2135
+ 6.2. Comparison Ladder
2136
+
2137
+ A variety of methods are used in practice to test URI equivalence.
2138
+ These methods fall into a range, distinguished by the amount of
2139
+ processing required and the degree to which the probability of false
2140
+ negatives is reduced. As noted above, false negatives cannot be
2141
+ eliminated. In practice, their probability can be reduced, but this
2142
+ reduction requires more processing and is not cost-effective for all
2143
+ applications.
2144
+
2145
+ If this range of comparison practices is considered as a ladder, the
2146
+ following discussion will climb the ladder, starting with practices
2147
+ that are cheap but have a relatively higher chance of producing false
2148
+ negatives, and proceeding to those that have higher computational
2149
+ cost and lower risk of false negatives.
2150
+
2151
+ 6.2.1. Simple String Comparison
2152
+
2153
+ If two URIs, when considered as character strings, are identical,
2154
+ then it is safe to conclude that they are equivalent. This type of
2155
+ equivalence test has very low computational cost and is in wide use
2156
+ in a variety of applications, particularly in the domain of parsing.
2157
+
2158
+ Testing strings for equivalence requires some basic precautions.
2159
+ This procedure is often referred to as "bit-for-bit" or
2160
+ "byte-for-byte" comparison, which is potentially misleading. Testing
2161
+ strings for equality is normally based on pair comparison of the
2162
+ characters that make up the strings, starting from the first and
2163
+ proceeding until both strings are exhausted and all characters are
2164
+ found to be equal, until a pair of characters compares unequal, or
2165
+ until one of the strings is exhausted before the other.
2166
+
2167
+ This character comparison requires that each pair of characters be
2168
+ put in comparable form. For example, should one URI be stored in a
2169
+ byte array in EBCDIC encoding and the second in a Java String object
2170
+ (UTF-16), bit-for-bit comparisons applied naively will produce
2171
+ errors. It is better to speak of equality on a character-for-
2172
+ character basis rather than on a byte-for-byte or bit-for-bit basis.
2173
+ In practical terms, character-by-character comparisons should be done
2174
+ codepoint-by-codepoint after conversion to a common character
2175
+ encoding.
2176
+
2177
+ False negatives are caused by the production and use of URI aliases.
2178
+ Unnecessary aliases can be reduced, regardless of the comparison
2179
+ method, by consistently providing URI references in an already-
2180
+ normalized form (i.e., a form identical to what would be produced
2181
+ after normalization is applied, as described below).
2182
+
2183
+
2184
+
2185
+
2186
+ Berners-Lee, et al. Standards Track [Page 39]
2187
+
2188
+ RFC 3986 URI Generic Syntax January 2005
2189
+
2190
+
2191
+ Protocols and data formats often limit some URI comparisons to simple
2192
+ string comparison, based on the theory that people and
2193
+ implementations will, in their own best interest, be consistent in
2194
+ providing URI references, or at least consistent enough to negate any
2195
+ efficiency that might be obtained from further normalization.
2196
+
2197
+ 6.2.2. Syntax-Based Normalization
2198
+
2199
+ Implementations may use logic based on the definitions provided by
2200
+ this specification to reduce the probability of false negatives.
2201
+ This processing is moderately higher in cost than character-for-
2202
+ character string comparison. For example, an application using this
2203
+ approach could reasonably consider the following two URIs equivalent:
2204
+
2205
+ example://a/b/c/%7Bfoo%7D
2206
+ eXAMPLE://a/./b/../b/%63/%7bfoo%7d
2207
+
2208
+ Web user agents, such as browsers, typically apply this type of URI
2209
+ normalization when determining whether a cached response is
2210
+ available. Syntax-based normalization includes such techniques as
2211
+ case normalization, percent-encoding normalization, and removal of
2212
+ dot-segments.
2213
+
2214
+ 6.2.2.1. Case Normalization
2215
+
2216
+ For all URIs, the hexadecimal digits within a percent-encoding
2217
+ triplet (e.g., "%3a" versus "%3A") are case-insensitive and therefore
2218
+ should be normalized to use uppercase letters for the digits A-F.
2219
+
2220
+ When a URI uses components of the generic syntax, the component
2221
+ syntax equivalence rules always apply; namely, that the scheme and
2222
+ host are case-insensitive and therefore should be normalized to
2223
+ lowercase. For example, the URI <HTTP://www.EXAMPLE.com/> is
2224
+ equivalent to <http://www.example.com/>. The other generic syntax
2225
+ components are assumed to be case-sensitive unless specifically
2226
+ defined otherwise by the scheme (see Section 6.2.3).
2227
+
2228
+ 6.2.2.2. Percent-Encoding Normalization
2229
+
2230
+ The percent-encoding mechanism (Section 2.1) is a frequent source of
2231
+ variance among otherwise identical URIs. In addition to the case
2232
+ normalization issue noted above, some URI producers percent-encode
2233
+ octets that do not require percent-encoding, resulting in URIs that
2234
+ are equivalent to their non-encoded counterparts. These URIs should
2235
+ be normalized by decoding any percent-encoded octet that corresponds
2236
+ to an unreserved character, as described in Section 2.3.
2237
+
2238
+
2239
+
2240
+
2241
+
2242
+ Berners-Lee, et al. Standards Track [Page 40]
2243
+
2244
+ RFC 3986 URI Generic Syntax January 2005
2245
+
2246
+
2247
+ 6.2.2.3. Path Segment Normalization
2248
+
2249
+ The complete path segments "." and ".." are intended only for use
2250
+ within relative references (Section 4.1) and are removed as part of
2251
+ the reference resolution process (Section 5.2). However, some
2252
+ deployed implementations incorrectly assume that reference resolution
2253
+ is not necessary when the reference is already a URI and thus fail to
2254
+ remove dot-segments when they occur in non-relative paths. URI
2255
+ normalizers should remove dot-segments by applying the
2256
+ remove_dot_segments algorithm to the path, as described in
2257
+ Section 5.2.4.
2258
+
2259
+ 6.2.3. Scheme-Based Normalization
2260
+
2261
+ The syntax and semantics of URIs vary from scheme to scheme, as
2262
+ described by the defining specification for each scheme.
2263
+ Implementations may use scheme-specific rules, at further processing
2264
+ cost, to reduce the probability of false negatives. For example,
2265
+ because the "http" scheme makes use of an authority component, has a
2266
+ default port of "80", and defines an empty path to be equivalent to
2267
+ "/", the following four URIs are equivalent:
2268
+
2269
+ http://example.com
2270
+ http://example.com/
2271
+ http://example.com:/
2272
+ http://example.com:80/
2273
+
2274
+ In general, a URI that uses the generic syntax for authority with an
2275
+ empty path should be normalized to a path of "/". Likewise, an
2276
+ explicit ":port", for which the port is empty or the default for the
2277
+ scheme, is equivalent to one where the port and its ":" delimiter are
2278
+ elided and thus should be removed by scheme-based normalization. For
2279
+ example, the second URI above is the normal form for the "http"
2280
+ scheme.
2281
+
2282
+ Another case where normalization varies by scheme is in the handling
2283
+ of an empty authority component or empty host subcomponent. For many
2284
+ scheme specifications, an empty authority or host is considered an
2285
+ error; for others, it is considered equivalent to "localhost" or the
2286
+ end-user's host. When a scheme defines a default for authority and a
2287
+ URI reference to that default is desired, the reference should be
2288
+ normalized to an empty authority for the sake of uniformity, brevity,
2289
+ and internationalization. If, however, either the userinfo or port
2290
+ subcomponents are non-empty, then the host should be given explicitly
2291
+ even if it matches the default.
2292
+
2293
+ Normalization should not remove delimiters when their associated
2294
+ component is empty unless licensed to do so by the scheme
2295
+
2296
+
2297
+
2298
+ Berners-Lee, et al. Standards Track [Page 41]
2299
+
2300
+ RFC 3986 URI Generic Syntax January 2005
2301
+
2302
+
2303
+ specification. For example, the URI "http://example.com/?" cannot be
2304
+ assumed to be equivalent to any of the examples above. Likewise, the
2305
+ presence or absence of delimiters within a userinfo subcomponent is
2306
+ usually significant to its interpretation. The fragment component is
2307
+ not subject to any scheme-based normalization; thus, two URIs that
2308
+ differ only by the suffix "#" are considered different regardless of
2309
+ the scheme.
2310
+
2311
+ Some schemes define additional subcomponents that consist of case-
2312
+ insensitive data, giving an implicit license to normalizers to
2313
+ convert this data to a common case (e.g., all lowercase). For
2314
+ example, URI schemes that define a subcomponent of path to contain an
2315
+ Internet hostname, such as the "mailto" URI scheme, cause that
2316
+ subcomponent to be case-insensitive and thus subject to case
2317
+ normalization (e.g., "mailto:Joe@Example.COM" is equivalent to
2318
+ "mailto:Joe@example.com", even though the generic syntax considers
2319
+ the path component to be case-sensitive).
2320
+
2321
+ Other scheme-specific normalizations are possible.
2322
+
2323
+ 6.2.4. Protocol-Based Normalization
2324
+
2325
+ Substantial effort to reduce the incidence of false negatives is
2326
+ often cost-effective for web spiders. Therefore, they implement even
2327
+ more aggressive techniques in URI comparison. For example, if they
2328
+ observe that a URI such as
2329
+
2330
+ http://example.com/data
2331
+
2332
+ redirects to a URI differing only in the trailing slash
2333
+
2334
+ http://example.com/data/
2335
+
2336
+ they will likely regard the two as equivalent in the future. This
2337
+ kind of technique is only appropriate when equivalence is clearly
2338
+ indicated by both the result of accessing the resources and the
2339
+ common conventions of their scheme's dereference algorithm (in this
2340
+ case, use of redirection by HTTP origin servers to avoid problems
2341
+ with relative references).
2342
+
2343
+
2344
+
2345
+
2346
+
2347
+
2348
+
2349
+
2350
+
2351
+
2352
+
2353
+
2354
+ Berners-Lee, et al. Standards Track [Page 42]
2355
+
2356
+ RFC 3986 URI Generic Syntax January 2005
2357
+
2358
+
2359
+ 7. Security Considerations
2360
+
2361
+ A URI does not in itself pose a security threat. However, as URIs
2362
+ are often used to provide a compact set of instructions for access to
2363
+ network resources, care must be taken to properly interpret the data
2364
+ within a URI, to prevent that data from causing unintended access,
2365
+ and to avoid including data that should not be revealed in plain
2366
+ text.
2367
+
2368
+ 7.1. Reliability and Consistency
2369
+
2370
+ There is no guarantee that once a URI has been used to retrieve
2371
+ information, the same information will be retrievable by that URI in
2372
+ the future. Nor is there any guarantee that the information
2373
+ retrievable via that URI in the future will be observably similar to
2374
+ that retrieved in the past. The URI syntax does not constrain how a
2375
+ given scheme or authority apportions its namespace or maintains it
2376
+ over time. Such guarantees can only be obtained from the person(s)
2377
+ controlling that namespace and the resource in question. A specific
2378
+ URI scheme may define additional semantics, such as name persistence,
2379
+ if those semantics are required of all naming authorities for that
2380
+ scheme.
2381
+
2382
+ 7.2. Malicious Construction
2383
+
2384
+ It is sometimes possible to construct a URI so that an attempt to
2385
+ perform a seemingly harmless, idempotent operation, such as the
2386
+ retrieval of a representation, will in fact cause a possibly damaging
2387
+ remote operation. The unsafe URI is typically constructed by
2388
+ specifying a port number other than that reserved for the network
2389
+ protocol in question. The client unwittingly contacts a site running
2390
+ a different protocol service, and data within the URI contains
2391
+ instructions that, when interpreted according to this other protocol,
2392
+ cause an unexpected operation. A frequent example of such abuse has
2393
+ been the use of a protocol-based scheme with a port component of
2394
+ "25", thereby fooling user agent software into sending an unintended
2395
+ or impersonating message via an SMTP server.
2396
+
2397
+ Applications should prevent dereference of a URI that specifies a TCP
2398
+ port number within the "well-known port" range (0 - 1023) unless the
2399
+ protocol being used to dereference that URI is compatible with the
2400
+ protocol expected on that well-known port. Although IANA maintains a
2401
+ registry of well-known ports, applications should make such
2402
+ restrictions user-configurable to avoid preventing the deployment of
2403
+ new services.
2404
+
2405
+
2406
+
2407
+
2408
+
2409
+
2410
+ Berners-Lee, et al. Standards Track [Page 43]
2411
+
2412
+ RFC 3986 URI Generic Syntax January 2005
2413
+
2414
+
2415
+ When a URI contains percent-encoded octets that match the delimiters
2416
+ for a given resolution or dereference protocol (for example, CR and
2417
+ LF characters for the TELNET protocol), these percent-encodings must
2418
+ not be decoded before transmission across that protocol. Transfer of
2419
+ the percent-encoding, which might violate the protocol, is less
2420
+ harmful than allowing decoded octets to be interpreted as additional
2421
+ operations or parameters, perhaps triggering an unexpected and
2422
+ possibly harmful remote operation.
2423
+
2424
+ 7.3. Back-End Transcoding
2425
+
2426
+ When a URI is dereferenced, the data within it is often parsed by
2427
+ both the user agent and one or more servers. In HTTP, for example, a
2428
+ typical user agent will parse a URI into its five major components,
2429
+ access the authority's server, and send it the data within the
2430
+ authority, path, and query components. A typical server will take
2431
+ that information, parse the path into segments and the query into
2432
+ key/value pairs, and then invoke implementation-specific handlers to
2433
+ respond to the request. As a result, a common security concern for
2434
+ server implementations that handle a URI, either as a whole or split
2435
+ into separate components, is proper interpretation of the octet data
2436
+ represented by the characters and percent-encodings within that URI.
2437
+
2438
+ Percent-encoded octets must be decoded at some point during the
2439
+ dereference process. Applications must split the URI into its
2440
+ components and subcomponents prior to decoding the octets, as
2441
+ otherwise the decoded octets might be mistaken for delimiters.
2442
+ Security checks of the data within a URI should be applied after
2443
+ decoding the octets. Note, however, that the "%00" percent-encoding
2444
+ (NUL) may require special handling and should be rejected if the
2445
+ application is not expecting to receive raw data within a component.
2446
+
2447
+ Special care should be taken when the URI path interpretation process
2448
+ involves the use of a back-end file system or related system
2449
+ functions. File systems typically assign an operational meaning to
2450
+ special characters, such as the "/", "\", ":", "[", and "]"
2451
+ characters, and to special device names like ".", "..", "...", "aux",
2452
+ "lpt", etc. In some cases, merely testing for the existence of such
2453
+ a name will cause the operating system to pause or invoke unrelated
2454
+ system calls, leading to significant security concerns regarding
2455
+ denial of service and unintended data transfer. It would be
2456
+ impossible for this specification to list all such significant
2457
+ characters and device names. Implementers should research the
2458
+ reserved names and characters for the types of storage device that
2459
+ may be attached to their applications and restrict the use of data
2460
+ obtained from URI components accordingly.
2461
+
2462
+
2463
+
2464
+
2465
+
2466
+ Berners-Lee, et al. Standards Track [Page 44]
2467
+
2468
+ RFC 3986 URI Generic Syntax January 2005
2469
+
2470
+
2471
+ 7.4. Rare IP Address Formats
2472
+
2473
+ Although the URI syntax for IPv4address only allows the common
2474
+ dotted-decimal form of IPv4 address literal, many implementations
2475
+ that process URIs make use of platform-dependent system routines,
2476
+ such as gethostbyname() and inet_aton(), to translate the string
2477
+ literal to an actual IP address. Unfortunately, such system routines
2478
+ often allow and process a much larger set of formats than those
2479
+ described in Section 3.2.2.
2480
+
2481
+ For example, many implementations allow dotted forms of three
2482
+ numbers, wherein the last part is interpreted as a 16-bit quantity
2483
+ and placed in the right-most two bytes of the network address (e.g.,
2484
+ a Class B network). Likewise, a dotted form of two numbers means
2485
+ that the last part is interpreted as a 24-bit quantity and placed in
2486
+ the right-most three bytes of the network address (Class A), and a
2487
+ single number (without dots) is interpreted as a 32-bit quantity and
2488
+ stored directly in the network address. Adding further to the
2489
+ confusion, some implementations allow each dotted part to be
2490
+ interpreted as decimal, octal, or hexadecimal, as specified in the C
2491
+ language (i.e., a leading 0x or 0X implies hexadecimal; a leading 0
2492
+ implies octal; otherwise, the number is interpreted as decimal).
2493
+
2494
+ These additional IP address formats are not allowed in the URI syntax
2495
+ due to differences between platform implementations. However, they
2496
+ can become a security concern if an application attempts to filter
2497
+ access to resources based on the IP address in string literal format.
2498
+ If this filtering is performed, literals should be converted to
2499
+ numeric form and filtered based on the numeric value, and not on a
2500
+ prefix or suffix of the string form.
2501
+
2502
+ 7.5. Sensitive Information
2503
+
2504
+ URI producers should not provide a URI that contains a username or
2505
+ password that is intended to be secret. URIs are frequently
2506
+ displayed by browsers, stored in clear text bookmarks, and logged by
2507
+ user agent history and intermediary applications (proxies). A
2508
+ password appearing within the userinfo component is deprecated and
2509
+ should be considered an error (or simply ignored) except in those
2510
+ rare cases where the 'password' parameter is intended to be public.
2511
+
2512
+ 7.6. Semantic Attacks
2513
+
2514
+ Because the userinfo subcomponent is rarely used and appears before
2515
+ the host in the authority component, it can be used to construct a
2516
+ URI intended to mislead a human user by appearing to identify one
2517
+ (trusted) naming authority while actually identifying a different
2518
+ authority hidden behind the noise. For example
2519
+
2520
+
2521
+
2522
+ Berners-Lee, et al. Standards Track [Page 45]
2523
+
2524
+ RFC 3986 URI Generic Syntax January 2005
2525
+
2526
+
2527
+ ftp://cnn.example.com&story=breaking_news@10.0.0.1/top_story.htm
2528
+
2529
+ might lead a human user to assume that the host is 'cnn.example.com',
2530
+ whereas it is actually '10.0.0.1'. Note that a misleading userinfo
2531
+ subcomponent could be much longer than the example above.
2532
+
2533
+ A misleading URI, such as that above, is an attack on the user's
2534
+ preconceived notions about the meaning of a URI rather than an attack
2535
+ on the software itself. User agents may be able to reduce the impact
2536
+ of such attacks by distinguishing the various components of the URI
2537
+ when they are rendered, such as by using a different color or tone to
2538
+ render userinfo if any is present, though there is no panacea. More
2539
+ information on URI-based semantic attacks can be found in [Siedzik].
2540
+
2541
+ 8. IANA Considerations
2542
+
2543
+ URI scheme names, as defined by <scheme> in Section 3.1, form a
2544
+ registered namespace that is managed by IANA according to the
2545
+ procedures defined in [BCP35]. No IANA actions are required by this
2546
+ document.
2547
+
2548
+ 9. Acknowledgements
2549
+
2550
+ This specification is derived from RFC 2396 [RFC2396], RFC 1808
2551
+ [RFC1808], and RFC 1738 [RFC1738]; the acknowledgements in those
2552
+ documents still apply. It also incorporates the update (with
2553
+ corrections) for IPv6 literals in the host syntax, as defined by
2554
+ Robert M. Hinden, Brian E. Carpenter, and Larry Masinter in
2555
+ [RFC2732]. In addition, contributions by Gisle Aas, Reese Anschultz,
2556
+ Daniel Barclay, Tim Bray, Mike Brown, Rob Cameron, Jeremy Carroll,
2557
+ Dan Connolly, Adam M. Costello, John Cowan, Jason Diamond, Martin
2558
+ Duerst, Stefan Eissing, Clive D.W. Feather, Al Gilman, Tony Hammond,
2559
+ Elliotte Harold, Pat Hayes, Henry Holtzman, Ian B. Jacobs, Michael
2560
+ Kay, John C. Klensin, Graham Klyne, Dan Kohn, Bruce Lilly, Andrew
2561
+ Main, Dave McAlpin, Ira McDonald, Michael Mealling, Ray Merkert,
2562
+ Stephen Pollei, Julian Reschke, Tomas Rokicki, Miles Sabin, Kai
2563
+ Schaetzl, Mark Thomson, Ronald Tschalaer, Norm Walsh, Marc Warne,
2564
+ Stuart Williams, and Henry Zongaro are gratefully acknowledged.
2565
+
2566
+ 10. References
2567
+
2568
+ 10.1. Normative References
2569
+
2570
+ [ASCII] American National Standards Institute, "Coded Character
2571
+ Set -- 7-bit American Standard Code for Information
2572
+ Interchange", ANSI X3.4, 1986.
2573
+
2574
+
2575
+
2576
+
2577
+
2578
+ Berners-Lee, et al. Standards Track [Page 46]
2579
+
2580
+ RFC 3986 URI Generic Syntax January 2005
2581
+
2582
+
2583
+ [RFC2234] Crocker, D. and P. Overell, "Augmented BNF for Syntax
2584
+ Specifications: ABNF", RFC 2234, November 1997.
2585
+
2586
+ [STD63] Yergeau, F., "UTF-8, a transformation format of
2587
+ ISO 10646", STD 63, RFC 3629, November 2003.
2588
+
2589
+ [UCS] International Organization for Standardization,
2590
+ "Information Technology - Universal Multiple-Octet Coded
2591
+ Character Set (UCS)", ISO/IEC 10646:2003, December 2003.
2592
+
2593
+ 10.2. Informative References
2594
+
2595
+ [BCP19] Freed, N. and J. Postel, "IANA Charset Registration
2596
+ Procedures", BCP 19, RFC 2978, October 2000.
2597
+
2598
+ [BCP35] Petke, R. and I. King, "Registration Procedures for URL
2599
+ Scheme Names", BCP 35, RFC 2717, November 1999.
2600
+
2601
+ [RFC0952] Harrenstien, K., Stahl, M., and E. Feinler, "DoD Internet
2602
+ host table specification", RFC 952, October 1985.
2603
+
2604
+ [RFC1034] Mockapetris, P., "Domain names - concepts and facilities",
2605
+ STD 13, RFC 1034, November 1987.
2606
+
2607
+ [RFC1123] Braden, R., "Requirements for Internet Hosts - Application
2608
+ and Support", STD 3, RFC 1123, October 1989.
2609
+
2610
+ [RFC1535] Gavron, E., "A Security Problem and Proposed Correction
2611
+ With Widely Deployed DNS Software", RFC 1535,
2612
+ October 1993.
2613
+
2614
+ [RFC1630] Berners-Lee, T., "Universal Resource Identifiers in WWW: A
2615
+ Unifying Syntax for the Expression of Names and Addresses
2616
+ of Objects on the Network as used in the World-Wide Web",
2617
+ RFC 1630, June 1994.
2618
+
2619
+ [RFC1736] Kunze, J., "Functional Recommendations for Internet
2620
+ Resource Locators", RFC 1736, February 1995.
2621
+
2622
+ [RFC1737] Sollins, K. and L. Masinter, "Functional Requirements for
2623
+ Uniform Resource Names", RFC 1737, December 1994.
2624
+
2625
+ [RFC1738] Berners-Lee, T., Masinter, L., and M. McCahill, "Uniform
2626
+ Resource Locators (URL)", RFC 1738, December 1994.
2627
+
2628
+ [RFC1808] Fielding, R., "Relative Uniform Resource Locators",
2629
+ RFC 1808, June 1995.
2630
+
2631
+
2632
+
2633
+
2634
+ Berners-Lee, et al. Standards Track [Page 47]
2635
+
2636
+ RFC 3986 URI Generic Syntax January 2005
2637
+
2638
+
2639
+ [RFC2046] Freed, N. and N. Borenstein, "Multipurpose Internet Mail
2640
+ Extensions (MIME) Part Two: Media Types", RFC 2046,
2641
+ November 1996.
2642
+
2643
+ [RFC2141] Moats, R., "URN Syntax", RFC 2141, May 1997.
2644
+
2645
+ [RFC2396] Berners-Lee, T., Fielding, R., and L. Masinter, "Uniform
2646
+ Resource Identifiers (URI): Generic Syntax", RFC 2396,
2647
+ August 1998.
2648
+
2649
+ [RFC2518] Goland, Y., Whitehead, E., Faizi, A., Carter, S., and D.
2650
+ Jensen, "HTTP Extensions for Distributed Authoring --
2651
+ WEBDAV", RFC 2518, February 1999.
2652
+
2653
+ [RFC2557] Palme, J., Hopmann, A., and N. Shelness, "MIME
2654
+ Encapsulation of Aggregate Documents, such as HTML
2655
+ (MHTML)", RFC 2557, March 1999.
2656
+
2657
+ [RFC2718] Masinter, L., Alvestrand, H., Zigmond, D., and R. Petke,
2658
+ "Guidelines for new URL Schemes", RFC 2718, November 1999.
2659
+
2660
+ [RFC2732] Hinden, R., Carpenter, B., and L. Masinter, "Format for
2661
+ Literal IPv6 Addresses in URL's", RFC 2732, December 1999.
2662
+
2663
+ [RFC3305] Mealling, M. and R. Denenberg, "Report from the Joint
2664
+ W3C/IETF URI Planning Interest Group: Uniform Resource
2665
+ Identifiers (URIs), URLs, and Uniform Resource Names
2666
+ (URNs): Clarifications and Recommendations", RFC 3305,
2667
+ August 2002.
2668
+
2669
+ [RFC3490] Faltstrom, P., Hoffman, P., and A. Costello,
2670
+ "Internationalizing Domain Names in Applications (IDNA)",
2671
+ RFC 3490, March 2003.
2672
+
2673
+ [RFC3513] Hinden, R. and S. Deering, "Internet Protocol Version 6
2674
+ (IPv6) Addressing Architecture", RFC 3513, April 2003.
2675
+
2676
+ [Siedzik] Siedzik, R., "Semantic Attacks: What's in a URL?",
2677
+ April 2001, <http://www.giac.org/practical/gsec/
2678
+ Richard_Siedzik_GSEC.pdf>.
2679
+
2680
+
2681
+
2682
+
2683
+
2684
+
2685
+
2686
+
2687
+
2688
+
2689
+
2690
+ Berners-Lee, et al. Standards Track [Page 48]
2691
+
2692
+ RFC 3986 URI Generic Syntax January 2005
2693
+
2694
+
2695
+ Appendix A. Collected ABNF for URI
2696
+
2697
+ URI = scheme ":" hier-part [ "?" query ] [ "#" fragment ]
2698
+
2699
+ hier-part = "//" authority path-abempty
2700
+ / path-absolute
2701
+ / path-rootless
2702
+ / path-empty
2703
+
2704
+ URI-reference = URI / relative-ref
2705
+
2706
+ absolute-URI = scheme ":" hier-part [ "?" query ]
2707
+
2708
+ relative-ref = relative-part [ "?" query ] [ "#" fragment ]
2709
+
2710
+ relative-part = "//" authority path-abempty
2711
+ / path-absolute
2712
+ / path-noscheme
2713
+ / path-empty
2714
+
2715
+ scheme = ALPHA *( ALPHA / DIGIT / "+" / "-" / "." )
2716
+
2717
+ authority = [ userinfo "@" ] host [ ":" port ]
2718
+ userinfo = *( unreserved / pct-encoded / sub-delims / ":" )
2719
+ host = IP-literal / IPv4address / reg-name
2720
+ port = *DIGIT
2721
+
2722
+ IP-literal = "[" ( IPv6address / IPvFuture ) "]"
2723
+
2724
+ IPvFuture = "v" 1*HEXDIG "." 1*( unreserved / sub-delims / ":" )
2725
+
2726
+ IPv6address = 6( h16 ":" ) ls32
2727
+ / "::" 5( h16 ":" ) ls32
2728
+ / [ h16 ] "::" 4( h16 ":" ) ls32
2729
+ / [ *1( h16 ":" ) h16 ] "::" 3( h16 ":" ) ls32
2730
+ / [ *2( h16 ":" ) h16 ] "::" 2( h16 ":" ) ls32
2731
+ / [ *3( h16 ":" ) h16 ] "::" h16 ":" ls32
2732
+ / [ *4( h16 ":" ) h16 ] "::" ls32
2733
+ / [ *5( h16 ":" ) h16 ] "::" h16
2734
+ / [ *6( h16 ":" ) h16 ] "::"
2735
+
2736
+ h16 = 1*4HEXDIG
2737
+ ls32 = ( h16 ":" h16 ) / IPv4address
2738
+ IPv4address = dec-octet "." dec-octet "." dec-octet "." dec-octet
2739
+
2740
+
2741
+
2742
+
2743
+
2744
+
2745
+
2746
+ Berners-Lee, et al. Standards Track [Page 49]
2747
+
2748
+ RFC 3986 URI Generic Syntax January 2005
2749
+
2750
+
2751
+ dec-octet = DIGIT ; 0-9
2752
+ / %x31-39 DIGIT ; 10-99
2753
+ / "1" 2DIGIT ; 100-199
2754
+ / "2" %x30-34 DIGIT ; 200-249
2755
+ / "25" %x30-35 ; 250-255
2756
+
2757
+ reg-name = *( unreserved / pct-encoded / sub-delims )
2758
+
2759
+ path = path-abempty ; begins with "/" or is empty
2760
+ / path-absolute ; begins with "/" but not "//"
2761
+ / path-noscheme ; begins with a non-colon segment
2762
+ / path-rootless ; begins with a segment
2763
+ / path-empty ; zero characters
2764
+
2765
+ path-abempty = *( "/" segment )
2766
+ path-absolute = "/" [ segment-nz *( "/" segment ) ]
2767
+ path-noscheme = segment-nz-nc *( "/" segment )
2768
+ path-rootless = segment-nz *( "/" segment )
2769
+ path-empty = 0<pchar>
2770
+
2771
+ segment = *pchar
2772
+ segment-nz = 1*pchar
2773
+ segment-nz-nc = 1*( unreserved / pct-encoded / sub-delims / "@" )
2774
+ ; non-zero-length segment without any colon ":"
2775
+
2776
+ pchar = unreserved / pct-encoded / sub-delims / ":" / "@"
2777
+
2778
+ query = *( pchar / "/" / "?" )
2779
+
2780
+ fragment = *( pchar / "/" / "?" )
2781
+
2782
+ pct-encoded = "%" HEXDIG HEXDIG
2783
+
2784
+ unreserved = ALPHA / DIGIT / "-" / "." / "_" / "~"
2785
+ reserved = gen-delims / sub-delims
2786
+ gen-delims = ":" / "/" / "?" / "#" / "[" / "]" / "@"
2787
+ sub-delims = "!" / "$" / "&" / "'" / "(" / ")"
2788
+ / "*" / "+" / "," / ";" / "="
2789
+
2790
+ Appendix B. Parsing a URI Reference with a Regular Expression
2791
+
2792
+ As the "first-match-wins" algorithm is identical to the "greedy"
2793
+ disambiguation method used by POSIX regular expressions, it is
2794
+ natural and commonplace to use a regular expression for parsing the
2795
+ potential five components of a URI reference.
2796
+
2797
+ The following line is the regular expression for breaking-down a
2798
+ well-formed URI reference into its components.
2799
+
2800
+
2801
+
2802
+ Berners-Lee, et al. Standards Track [Page 50]
2803
+
2804
+ RFC 3986 URI Generic Syntax January 2005
2805
+
2806
+
2807
+ ^(([^:/?#]+):)?(//([^/?#]*))?([^?#]*)(\?([^#]*))?(#(.*))?
2808
+ 12 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
2809
+
2810
+ The numbers in the second line above are only to assist readability;
2811
+ they indicate the reference points for each subexpression (i.e., each
2812
+ paired parenthesis). We refer to the value matched for subexpression
2813
+ <n> as $<n>. For example, matching the above expression to
2814
+
2815
+ http://www.ics.uci.edu/pub/ietf/uri/#Related
2816
+
2817
+ results in the following subexpression matches:
2818
+
2819
+ $1 = http:
2820
+ $2 = http
2821
+ $3 = //www.ics.uci.edu
2822
+ $4 = www.ics.uci.edu
2823
+ $5 = /pub/ietf/uri/
2824
+ $6 = <undefined>
2825
+ $7 = <undefined>
2826
+ $8 = #Related
2827
+ $9 = Related
2828
+
2829
+ where <undefined> indicates that the component is not present, as is
2830
+ the case for the query component in the above example. Therefore, we
2831
+ can determine the value of the five components as
2832
+
2833
+ scheme = $2
2834
+ authority = $4
2835
+ path = $5
2836
+ query = $7
2837
+ fragment = $9
2838
+
2839
+ Going in the opposite direction, we can recreate a URI reference from
2840
+ its components by using the algorithm of Section 5.3.
2841
+
2842
+ Appendix C. Delimiting a URI in Context
2843
+
2844
+ URIs are often transmitted through formats that do not provide a
2845
+ clear context for their interpretation. For example, there are many
2846
+ occasions when a URI is included in plain text; examples include text
2847
+ sent in email, USENET news, and on printed paper. In such cases, it
2848
+ is important to be able to delimit the URI from the rest of the text,
2849
+ and in particular from punctuation marks that might be mistaken for
2850
+ part of the URI.
2851
+
2852
+ In practice, URIs are delimited in a variety of ways, but usually
2853
+ within double-quotes "http://example.com/", angle brackets
2854
+ <http://example.com/>, or just by using whitespace:
2855
+
2856
+
2857
+
2858
+ Berners-Lee, et al. Standards Track [Page 51]
2859
+
2860
+ RFC 3986 URI Generic Syntax January 2005
2861
+
2862
+
2863
+ http://example.com/
2864
+
2865
+ These wrappers do not form part of the URI.
2866
+
2867
+ In some cases, extra whitespace (spaces, line-breaks, tabs, etc.) may
2868
+ have to be added to break a long URI across lines. The whitespace
2869
+ should be ignored when the URI is extracted.
2870
+
2871
+ No whitespace should be introduced after a hyphen ("-") character.
2872
+ Because some typesetters and printers may (erroneously) introduce a
2873
+ hyphen at the end of line when breaking it, the interpreter of a URI
2874
+ containing a line break immediately after a hyphen should ignore all
2875
+ whitespace around the line break and should be aware that the hyphen
2876
+ may or may not actually be part of the URI.
2877
+
2878
+ Using <> angle brackets around each URI is especially recommended as
2879
+ a delimiting style for a reference that contains embedded whitespace.
2880
+
2881
+ The prefix "URL:" (with or without a trailing space) was formerly
2882
+ recommended as a way to help distinguish a URI from other bracketed
2883
+ designators, though it is not commonly used in practice and is no
2884
+ longer recommended.
2885
+
2886
+ For robustness, software that accepts user-typed URI should attempt
2887
+ to recognize and strip both delimiters and embedded whitespace.
2888
+
2889
+ For example, the text
2890
+
2891
+ Yes, Jim, I found it under "http://www.w3.org/Addressing/",
2892
+ but you can probably pick it up from <ftp://foo.example.
2893
+ com/rfc/>. Note the warning in <http://www.ics.uci.edu/pub/
2894
+ ietf/uri/historical.html#WARNING>.
2895
+
2896
+ contains the URI references
2897
+
2898
+ http://www.w3.org/Addressing/
2899
+ ftp://foo.example.com/rfc/
2900
+ http://www.ics.uci.edu/pub/ietf/uri/historical.html#WARNING
2901
+
2902
+
2903
+
2904
+
2905
+
2906
+
2907
+
2908
+
2909
+
2910
+
2911
+
2912
+
2913
+
2914
+ Berners-Lee, et al. Standards Track [Page 52]
2915
+
2916
+ RFC 3986 URI Generic Syntax January 2005
2917
+
2918
+
2919
+ Appendix D. Changes from RFC 2396
2920
+
2921
+ D.1. Additions
2922
+
2923
+ An ABNF rule for URI has been introduced to correspond to one common
2924
+ usage of the term: an absolute URI with optional fragment.
2925
+
2926
+ IPv6 (and later) literals have been added to the list of possible
2927
+ identifiers for the host portion of an authority component, as
2928
+ described by [RFC2732], with the addition of "[" and "]" to the
2929
+ reserved set and a version flag to anticipate future versions of IP
2930
+ literals. Square brackets are now specified as reserved within the
2931
+ authority component and are not allowed outside their use as
2932
+ delimiters for an IP literal within host. In order to make this
2933
+ change without changing the technical definition of the path, query,
2934
+ and fragment components, those rules were redefined to directly
2935
+ specify the characters allowed.
2936
+
2937
+ As [RFC2732] defers to [RFC3513] for definition of an IPv6 literal
2938
+ address, which, unfortunately, lacks an ABNF description of
2939
+ IPv6address, we created a new ABNF rule for IPv6address that matches
2940
+ the text representations defined by Section 2.2 of [RFC3513].
2941
+ Likewise, the definition of IPv4address has been improved in order to
2942
+ limit each decimal octet to the range 0-255.
2943
+
2944
+ Section 6, on URI normalization and comparison, has been completely
2945
+ rewritten and extended by using input from Tim Bray and discussion
2946
+ within the W3C Technical Architecture Group.
2947
+
2948
+ D.2. Modifications
2949
+
2950
+ The ad-hoc BNF syntax of RFC 2396 has been replaced with the ABNF of
2951
+ [RFC2234]. This change required all rule names that formerly
2952
+ included underscore characters to be renamed with a dash instead. In
2953
+ addition, a number of syntax rules have been eliminated or simplified
2954
+ to make the overall grammar more comprehensible. Specifications that
2955
+ refer to the obsolete grammar rules may be understood by replacing
2956
+ those rules according to the following table:
2957
+
2958
+
2959
+
2960
+
2961
+
2962
+
2963
+
2964
+
2965
+
2966
+
2967
+
2968
+
2969
+
2970
+ Berners-Lee, et al. Standards Track [Page 53]
2971
+
2972
+ RFC 3986 URI Generic Syntax January 2005
2973
+
2974
+
2975
+ +----------------+--------------------------------------------------+
2976
+ | obsolete rule | translation |
2977
+ +----------------+--------------------------------------------------+
2978
+ | absoluteURI | absolute-URI |
2979
+ | relativeURI | relative-part [ "?" query ] |
2980
+ | hier_part | ( "//" authority path-abempty / |
2981
+ | | path-absolute ) [ "?" query ] |
2982
+ | | |
2983
+ | opaque_part | path-rootless [ "?" query ] |
2984
+ | net_path | "//" authority path-abempty |
2985
+ | abs_path | path-absolute |
2986
+ | rel_path | path-rootless |
2987
+ | rel_segment | segment-nz-nc |
2988
+ | reg_name | reg-name |
2989
+ | server | authority |
2990
+ | hostport | host [ ":" port ] |
2991
+ | hostname | reg-name |
2992
+ | path_segments | path-abempty |
2993
+ | param | *<pchar excluding ";"> |
2994
+ | | |
2995
+ | uric | unreserved / pct-encoded / ";" / "?" / ":" |
2996
+ | | / "@" / "&" / "=" / "+" / "$" / "," / "/" |
2997
+ | | |
2998
+ | uric_no_slash | unreserved / pct-encoded / ";" / "?" / ":" |
2999
+ | | / "@" / "&" / "=" / "+" / "$" / "," |
3000
+ | | |
3001
+ | mark | "-" / "_" / "." / "!" / "~" / "*" / "'" |
3002
+ | | / "(" / ")" |
3003
+ | | |
3004
+ | escaped | pct-encoded |
3005
+ | hex | HEXDIG |
3006
+ | alphanum | ALPHA / DIGIT |
3007
+ +----------------+--------------------------------------------------+
3008
+
3009
+ Use of the above obsolete rules for the definition of scheme-specific
3010
+ syntax is deprecated.
3011
+
3012
+ Section 2, on characters, has been rewritten to explain what
3013
+ characters are reserved, when they are reserved, and why they are
3014
+ reserved, even when they are not used as delimiters by the generic
3015
+ syntax. The mark characters that are typically unsafe to decode,
3016
+ including the exclamation mark ("!"), asterisk ("*"), single-quote
3017
+ ("'"), and open and close parentheses ("(" and ")"), have been moved
3018
+ to the reserved set in order to clarify the distinction between
3019
+ reserved and unreserved and, hopefully, to answer the most common
3020
+ question of scheme designers. Likewise, the section on
3021
+ percent-encoded characters has been rewritten, and URI normalizers
3022
+ are now given license to decode any percent-encoded octets
3023
+
3024
+
3025
+
3026
+ Berners-Lee, et al. Standards Track [Page 54]
3027
+
3028
+ RFC 3986 URI Generic Syntax January 2005
3029
+
3030
+
3031
+ corresponding to unreserved characters. In general, the terms
3032
+ "escaped" and "unescaped" have been replaced with "percent-encoded"
3033
+ and "decoded", respectively, to reduce confusion with other forms of
3034
+ escape mechanisms.
3035
+
3036
+ The ABNF for URI and URI-reference has been redesigned to make them
3037
+ more friendly to LALR parsers and to reduce complexity. As a result,
3038
+ the layout form of syntax description has been removed, along with
3039
+ the uric, uric_no_slash, opaque_part, net_path, abs_path, rel_path,
3040
+ path_segments, rel_segment, and mark rules. All references to
3041
+ "opaque" URIs have been replaced with a better description of how the
3042
+ path component may be opaque to hierarchy. The relativeURI rule has
3043
+ been replaced with relative-ref to avoid unnecessary confusion over
3044
+ whether they are a subset of URI. The ambiguity regarding the
3045
+ parsing of URI-reference as a URI or a relative-ref with a colon in
3046
+ the first segment has been eliminated through the use of five
3047
+ separate path matching rules.
3048
+
3049
+ The fragment identifier has been moved back into the section on
3050
+ generic syntax components and within the URI and relative-ref rules,
3051
+ though it remains excluded from absolute-URI. The number sign ("#")
3052
+ character has been moved back to the reserved set as a result of
3053
+ reintegrating the fragment syntax.
3054
+
3055
+ The ABNF has been corrected to allow the path component to be empty.
3056
+ This also allows an absolute-URI to consist of nothing after the
3057
+ "scheme:", as is present in practice with the "dav:" namespace
3058
+ [RFC2518] and with the "about:" scheme used internally by many WWW
3059
+ browser implementations. The ambiguity regarding the boundary
3060
+ between authority and path has been eliminated through the use of
3061
+ five separate path matching rules.
3062
+
3063
+ Registry-based naming authorities that use the generic syntax are now
3064
+ defined within the host rule. This change allows current
3065
+ implementations, where whatever name provided is simply fed to the
3066
+ local name resolution mechanism, to be consistent with the
3067
+ specification. It also removes the need to re-specify DNS name
3068
+ formats here. Furthermore, it allows the host component to contain
3069
+ percent-encoded octets, which is necessary to enable
3070
+ internationalized domain names to be provided in URIs, processed in
3071
+ their native character encodings at the application layers above URI
3072
+ processing, and passed to an IDNA library as a registered name in the
3073
+ UTF-8 character encoding. The server, hostport, hostname,
3074
+ domainlabel, toplabel, and alphanum rules have been removed.
3075
+
3076
+ The resolving relative references algorithm of [RFC2396] has been
3077
+ rewritten with pseudocode for this revision to improve clarity and
3078
+ fix the following issues:
3079
+
3080
+
3081
+
3082
+ Berners-Lee, et al. Standards Track [Page 55]
3083
+
3084
+ RFC 3986 URI Generic Syntax January 2005
3085
+
3086
+
3087
+ o [RFC2396] section 5.2, step 6a, failed to account for a base URI
3088
+ with no path.
3089
+
3090
+ o Restored the behavior of [RFC1808] where, if the reference
3091
+ contains an empty path and a defined query component, the target
3092
+ URI inherits the base URI's path component.
3093
+
3094
+ o The determination of whether a URI reference is a same-document
3095
+ reference has been decoupled from the URI parser, simplifying the
3096
+ URI processing interface within applications in a way consistent
3097
+ with the internal architecture of deployed URI processing
3098
+ implementations. The determination is now based on comparison to
3099
+ the base URI after transforming a reference to absolute form,
3100
+ rather than on the format of the reference itself. This change
3101
+ may result in more references being considered "same-document"
3102
+ under this specification than there would be under the rules given
3103
+ in RFC 2396, especially when normalization is used to reduce
3104
+ aliases. However, it does not change the status of existing
3105
+ same-document references.
3106
+
3107
+ o Separated the path merge routine into two routines: merge, for
3108
+ describing combination of the base URI path with a relative-path
3109
+ reference, and remove_dot_segments, for describing how to remove
3110
+ the special "." and ".." segments from a composed path. The
3111
+ remove_dot_segments algorithm is now applied to all URI reference
3112
+ paths in order to match common implementations and to improve the
3113
+ normalization of URIs in practice. This change only impacts the
3114
+ parsing of abnormal references and same-scheme references wherein
3115
+ the base URI has a non-hierarchical path.
3116
+
3117
+ Index
3118
+
3119
+ A
3120
+ ABNF 11
3121
+ absolute 27
3122
+ absolute-path 26
3123
+ absolute-URI 27
3124
+ access 9
3125
+ authority 17, 18
3126
+
3127
+ B
3128
+ base URI 28
3129
+
3130
+ C
3131
+ character encoding 4
3132
+ character 4
3133
+ characters 8, 11
3134
+ coded character set 4
3135
+
3136
+
3137
+
3138
+ Berners-Lee, et al. Standards Track [Page 56]
3139
+
3140
+ RFC 3986 URI Generic Syntax January 2005
3141
+
3142
+
3143
+ D
3144
+ dec-octet 20
3145
+ dereference 9
3146
+ dot-segments 23
3147
+
3148
+ F
3149
+ fragment 16, 24
3150
+
3151
+ G
3152
+ gen-delims 13
3153
+ generic syntax 6
3154
+
3155
+ H
3156
+ h16 20
3157
+ hier-part 16
3158
+ hierarchical 10
3159
+ host 18
3160
+
3161
+ I
3162
+ identifier 5
3163
+ IP-literal 19
3164
+ IPv4 20
3165
+ IPv4address 19, 20
3166
+ IPv6 19
3167
+ IPv6address 19, 20
3168
+ IPvFuture 19
3169
+
3170
+ L
3171
+ locator 7
3172
+ ls32 20
3173
+
3174
+ M
3175
+ merge 32
3176
+
3177
+ N
3178
+ name 7
3179
+ network-path 26
3180
+
3181
+ P
3182
+ path 16, 22, 26
3183
+ path-abempty 22
3184
+ path-absolute 22
3185
+ path-empty 22
3186
+ path-noscheme 22
3187
+ path-rootless 22
3188
+ path-abempty 16, 22, 26
3189
+ path-absolute 16, 22, 26
3190
+ path-empty 16, 22, 26
3191
+
3192
+
3193
+
3194
+ Berners-Lee, et al. Standards Track [Page 57]
3195
+
3196
+ RFC 3986 URI Generic Syntax January 2005
3197
+
3198
+
3199
+ path-rootless 16, 22
3200
+ pchar 23
3201
+ pct-encoded 12
3202
+ percent-encoding 12
3203
+ port 22
3204
+
3205
+ Q
3206
+ query 16, 23
3207
+
3208
+ R
3209
+ reg-name 21
3210
+ registered name 20
3211
+ relative 10, 28
3212
+ relative-path 26
3213
+ relative-ref 26
3214
+ remove_dot_segments 33
3215
+ representation 9
3216
+ reserved 12
3217
+ resolution 9, 28
3218
+ resource 5
3219
+ retrieval 9
3220
+
3221
+ S
3222
+ same-document 27
3223
+ sameness 9
3224
+ scheme 16, 17
3225
+ segment 22, 23
3226
+ segment-nz 23
3227
+ segment-nz-nc 23
3228
+ sub-delims 13
3229
+ suffix 27
3230
+
3231
+ T
3232
+ transcription 8
3233
+
3234
+ U
3235
+ uniform 4
3236
+ unreserved 13
3237
+ URI grammar
3238
+ absolute-URI 27
3239
+ ALPHA 11
3240
+ authority 18
3241
+ CR 11
3242
+ dec-octet 20
3243
+ DIGIT 11
3244
+ DQUOTE 11
3245
+ fragment 24
3246
+ gen-delims 13
3247
+
3248
+
3249
+
3250
+ Berners-Lee, et al. Standards Track [Page 58]
3251
+
3252
+ RFC 3986 URI Generic Syntax January 2005
3253
+
3254
+
3255
+ h16 20
3256
+ HEXDIG 11
3257
+ hier-part 16
3258
+ host 19
3259
+ IP-literal 19
3260
+ IPv4address 20
3261
+ IPv6address 20
3262
+ IPvFuture 19
3263
+ LF 11
3264
+ ls32 20
3265
+ OCTET 11
3266
+ path 22
3267
+ path-abempty 22
3268
+ path-absolute 22
3269
+ path-empty 22
3270
+ path-noscheme 22
3271
+ path-rootless 22
3272
+ pchar 23
3273
+ pct-encoded 12
3274
+ port 22
3275
+ query 24
3276
+ reg-name 21
3277
+ relative-ref 26
3278
+ reserved 13
3279
+ scheme 17
3280
+ segment 23
3281
+ segment-nz 23
3282
+ segment-nz-nc 23
3283
+ SP 11
3284
+ sub-delims 13
3285
+ unreserved 13
3286
+ URI 16
3287
+ URI-reference 25
3288
+ userinfo 18
3289
+ URI 16
3290
+ URI-reference 25
3291
+ URL 7
3292
+ URN 7
3293
+ userinfo 18
3294
+
3295
+
3296
+
3297
+
3298
+
3299
+
3300
+
3301
+
3302
+
3303
+
3304
+
3305
+
3306
+ Berners-Lee, et al. Standards Track [Page 59]
3307
+
3308
+ RFC 3986 URI Generic Syntax January 2005
3309
+
3310
+
3311
+ Authors' Addresses
3312
+
3313
+ Tim Berners-Lee
3314
+ World Wide Web Consortium
3315
+ Massachusetts Institute of Technology
3316
+ 77 Massachusetts Avenue
3317
+ Cambridge, MA 02139
3318
+ USA
3319
+
3320
+ Phone: +1-617-253-5702
3321
+ Fax: +1-617-258-5999
3322
+ EMail: timbl@w3.org
3323
+ URI: http://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/
3324
+
3325
+
3326
+ Roy T. Fielding
3327
+ Day Software
3328
+ 5251 California Ave., Suite 110
3329
+ Irvine, CA 92617
3330
+ USA
3331
+
3332
+ Phone: +1-949-679-2960
3333
+ Fax: +1-949-679-2972
3334
+ EMail: fielding@gbiv.com
3335
+ URI: http://roy.gbiv.com/
3336
+
3337
+
3338
+ Larry Masinter
3339
+ Adobe Systems Incorporated
3340
+ 345 Park Ave
3341
+ San Jose, CA 95110
3342
+ USA
3343
+
3344
+ Phone: +1-408-536-3024
3345
+ EMail: LMM@acm.org
3346
+ URI: http://larry.masinter.net/
3347
+
3348
+
3349
+
3350
+
3351
+
3352
+
3353
+
3354
+
3355
+
3356
+
3357
+
3358
+
3359
+
3360
+
3361
+
3362
+ Berners-Lee, et al. Standards Track [Page 60]
3363
+
3364
+ RFC 3986 URI Generic Syntax January 2005
3365
+
3366
+
3367
+ Full Copyright Statement
3368
+
3369
+ Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2005).
3370
+
3371
+ This document is subject to the rights, licenses and restrictions
3372
+ contained in BCP 78, and except as set forth therein, the authors
3373
+ retain all their rights.
3374
+
3375
+ This document and the information contained herein are provided on an
3376
+ "AS IS" basis and THE CONTRIBUTOR, THE ORGANIZATION HE/SHE REPRESENTS
3377
+ OR IS SPONSORED BY (IF ANY), THE INTERNET SOCIETY AND THE INTERNET
3378
+ ENGINEERING TASK FORCE DISCLAIM ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED,
3379
+ INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANY WARRANTY THAT THE USE OF THE
3380
+ INFORMATION HEREIN WILL NOT INFRINGE ANY RIGHTS OR ANY IMPLIED
3381
+ WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
3382
+
3383
+ Intellectual Property
3384
+
3385
+ The IETF takes no position regarding the validity or scope of any
3386
+ Intellectual Property Rights or other rights that might be claimed to
3387
+ pertain to the implementation or use of the technology described in
3388
+ this document or the extent to which any license under such rights
3389
+ might or might not be available; nor does it represent that it has
3390
+ made any independent effort to identify any such rights. Information
3391
+ on the IETF's procedures with respect to rights in IETF Documents can
3392
+ be found in BCP 78 and BCP 79.
3393
+
3394
+ Copies of IPR disclosures made to the IETF Secretariat and any
3395
+ assurances of licenses to be made available, or the result of an
3396
+ attempt made to obtain a general license or permission for the use of
3397
+ such proprietary rights by implementers or users of this
3398
+ specification can be obtained from the IETF on-line IPR repository at
3399
+ http://www.ietf.org/ipr.
3400
+
3401
+ The IETF invites any interested party to bring to its attention any
3402
+ copyrights, patents or patent applications, or other proprietary
3403
+ rights that may cover technology that may be required to implement
3404
+ this standard. Please address the information to the IETF at ietf-
3405
+ ipr@ietf.org.
3406
+
3407
+
3408
+ Acknowledgement
3409
+
3410
+ Funding for the RFC Editor function is currently provided by the
3411
+ Internet Society.
3412
+
3413
+
3414
+
3415
+
3416
+
3417
+
3418
+ Berners-Lee, et al. Standards Track [Page 61]
3419
+