Uniform Resource Identifier

In information technology, a Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) is a string of characters used to identify a resource. Such identification enables interaction with representations of the resource over a network, typically the World Wide Web, using specific . Schemes specifying a concrete syntax and associated protocols define each URI. The most common form of URI is the Uniform Resource Locator (URL), frequently referred to informally as a web address. More rarely seen in usage is the Uniform Resource Name (URN), which was designed to complement URLs by providing a mechanism for the identification of resources in particular namespaces.

A Uniform Resource Name (URN) can be compared to a person's name, while a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) can be compared to their street address. In other words, a URN identifies an item and a URL provides a method for finding it.

A URL is a URI that, in addition to identifying a web resource, specifies the means of acting upon or obtaining the representation of it, i.e. specifying both its primary access mechanism and network location. For example, the URL refers to a resource identified as whose representation, in the form of HTML and related code, is obtainable via (http) from a network host whose domain name is example.org.

A URN is a URI that identifies a resource by name in a particular namespace. A URN may be used to talk about a resource without implying its location or how to access it. For example, in the International Standard Book Number (ISBN) system, ISBN 0-486-27557-4 identifies a specific edition of Shakespeare's play Romeo and Juliet. The URN for that edition would be urn:isbn:0-486-27557-4. To gain access to the book, its location is needed, for which a URL would have to be specified.

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