Uniform Resource Identifier: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 15:56, 3 March 2025

Revision as of 12:44, 23 April 2025

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{{Distinguish|URL}}

{{More footnotes|date=February 2024}}

A '''Uniform Resource Identifier''' ('''URI'''), formerly '''Universal Resource Identifier''', is a unique sequence of characters that identifies an abstract or physical resource,{{Sfn|Berners-Lee, Tim; Fielding, Roy T.; Masinter, Larry|2005|p=1|ps=, "Abstract"}} such as resources on a webpage, mail address, phone number,{{Sfn|Berners-Lee, Tim; Fielding, Roy T.; Masinter, Larry|2005|p=7|ps=; "1.1.2. Examples", "1.1.3. URI, URL, and URN"}} books, real-world objects such as people and places, concepts.{{Sfn|Berners-Lee, Tim; Fielding, Roy T.; Masinter, Larry|2005|p=5|ps=, "Resource: the term "resource" is used in a general sense for whatever might be identified by a URI"}} URIs are used to identify anything described using the [[Resource Description Framework]] (RDF), for example, concepts that are part of an [[Ontology (information science)|ontology]] defined using the [[Web Ontology Language]] (OWL), and people who are described using the [[FOAF (ontology)|Friend of a Friend vocabulary]] would each have an individual URI.

{{Infobox technology standard

| title = Uniform Resource Identifier

| long_name =

| native_name = RFC 3986

| native_name_lang = en

| status = Active

| year_started = 2005

| first_published = {{Start date|2005|01|}}

| organization = RFC

| image =

| caption =

| abbreviation = URI

| authors = [[Tim Berners-Lee]]; [[Roy Thomas Fielding]]; [[Larry Masinter]]

| ___domain = [[World Wide Web]]

| website = https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc3986#section-1.1

}}

A '''Uniform Resource Identifier''' ('''URI'''), formerly '''Universal Resource Identifier''', is a unique sequence of characters that identifies an abstract or physical resource,{{Sfn|Berners-Lee, Tim; Fielding, Roy T.; Masinter, Larry|2005|p=1|ps=, "Abstract"}} such as resources on a webpage, mail address, phone number,{{Sfn|Berners-Lee, Tim; Fielding, Roy T.; Masinter, Larry|2005|p=7|ps=; "1.1.2. Examples", "1.1.3. URI, URL, and URN"}} books, real-world objects such as people and places, concepts.{{Sfn|Berners-Lee, Tim; Fielding, Roy T.; Masinter, Larry|2005|p=5|ps=, "Resource: the term "resource" is used in a general sense for whatever might be identified by a URI"}} URIs are used to identify anything described using the [[Resource Description Framework]] (RDF), for example, concepts that are part of an [[Ontology (information science)|ontology]] defined using the [[Web Ontology Language]] (OWL), and people who are described using the [[FOAF (ontology)|Friend of a Friend vocabulary]] would each have an individual URI.

URIs which provide a means of locating and [[Information retrieval|retrieving]] information resources on a network (either on the Internet or on another private network, such as a computer filesystem or an [[Intranet]]) are [[Uniform Resource Locator]]sLocators ('''URLs'''). Therefore, URLs are a subset of URIs, ie. every URL is a URI (and not necessarily the other way around).{{Sfn|Berners-Lee, Tim; Fielding, Roy T.; Masinter, Larry|2005|p=7|ps=; "1.1.2. Examples", "1.1.3. URI, URL, and URN"}} Other URIs provide only a unique name, without a means of locating or retrieving the resource or information about it; these are [[Uniform Resource Name]]sNames (URNs). The web technologies that use URIs are not limited to [[Web browser|web browsers]].

== History ==