Uniform Resource Locators (URL), also known as web addresses, provide a convenient way to specify particular web resources. You can navigate to a URL by typing it into your web browser's address bar. Alternately, if you're browsing a web page and click on a link, that link is indicated with a URL.
Consider the http://www.example.com:80/res/page1.php?user=bob#account URL. Visually, the URL can be broken down like this:
The URL can indicate the protocol, the host, the port number, the document path, and hash. However, the host is the only required part. The other parts can be implied.
We can parse the example URL from the preceding diagram:
- http://: The part before the first :// indicates the protocol. In this example, the protocol is http, but it could be a different protocol such as ftp:// or https://. If the protocol is omitted...
