URL

A Uniform Resource Locator (URL) refers to where a resource can be found. This includes locations for web pages and media such as images and videos. URLs use protocols to perform different tasks with these resources including:

• Web browsing with HTTP/HTTPS
• Transferring files with FTP/SFTP
• Sending emails with SMTP

Syntax

|----------------------------URL-------------------|
|        |--------------------------URN------------|------|
scheme://domain:port/path/to/resource?query=params#fragment
|----------------------------URI--------------------------|

Since URLs and URNs are a subset of URIs, the syntax can be similar. However, URLs use a scheme that describes the protocol used to find the resource. Next, a domain and possible port number are used to describe the authority behind the resource.

Example

https://www.codecademy.com/resources/blog/what-is-web-development/

Copy to clipboard
Copy to clipboard

The example above uses the following:

• A protocol scheme (http) to connect to the Internet
• A subdomain (www) for the world-wide web
• A domain (codecademy.com) to a website
• A path (/resources/blog/what-is-web-development/), which locates the specific resource

Note: URLs follow a standard format that always uses a forward slash (/) as the path separator regardless of the operating system.