URI path

The path of a URI is the section that comes after the authority. It contains data, usually organized in hierarchical form, to identify a resource within the scope of the URI's scheme and naming authority.

Syntax

url
http://example.com:80<path>
urn:<path>

The path can contain nearly all characters, except ? and # (which start the query and fragment respectively), and other characters reserved by the URI scheme. Some schemes (known as hierarchical schemes) further parse the path as a sequence of segments separated by slash (/) characters; others treat it as a single opaque string.

Description

The path follows the authority and is terminated by the first question mark (?), number sign (#), or the end of the URI. In the following two URIs:

url
urn:nbn:de:bvb:19-epub-5359-3
https://example.com:80/images/animated/ayse.gif

nbn:de:bvb:19-epub-5359-3 is the path of the URN. /images/animated/ayse.gif is the path of the https URI.

Every URI has a path component, meaning the paths in the following examples are a forward-slash (/) in the first URL and an empty path component in the second:

url
https://example.com/
https://example.com

Browsers, including the URL web API, normalize empty paths to /.

Specifications

Specification
Unknown specification
# section-3.3

See also