HTML URLs

HTML URLs and URL Encoding

A Uniform Resource Locator (URL) is simply the address of a website to access the website content. Web browsers retrieve pages from web servers using a URL (Uniform Resource Locator).

What is URL Encoding?

URL Encoding is the process of converting the URL into a valid format that is accepted by web browsers.

Only certain characters are allowed to be used in the URL like alphabets A-Z and a-z, numbers 0-9, and a few special characters. They can be used as it is but the rest of the characters that are not in this list are used after encoding them to a suitable form. URL Encoding takes place by replacing all the characters that are not allowed by a % sign followed by two hexadecimal digits. These two hexadecimal values represent the numerical values of the character in the ASCII character set.

For example, a space is not acceptable in a URL and is replaced by a %20 or a + sign while encoding. Similarly, a $ sign is replaced by %24.

URL Syntax

A web address follows these syntax rules:

Example: https://www.intricatedevo.com/

• Scheme: It specifies the protocol used for communication, such as "https://" for secure communication or "http://" for unsecured communication.
• Prefix: It is an optional subdomain or www indicating the location of the resource within the domain.
• Domain: Identifies the website's primary address, like "example.com", indicating its unique location on the Internet.
• Port: Optional and signifies a specific endpoint for communication. Common values are 80 for HTTP and 443 for HTTPS.
• Path: It specifies the location or directory on the server where the resource is located.
• Filename: It refers to the specific file or resource within the specified path.