IT skills: compose URLs IT concepts: parts of a URL, shortened URLs This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial- Share Alike 3.0 License. URLs – uniform resource locators

Where does this topic fit? Internet concepts – Applications – Technology – Implications Internet skills – Application development – Content creation

Client Server request page URL, uniform resource locator

Four parts of the URL

The domain name

root staff fac jsmith jdoe admin... lpress The directory *

root staff fac jsmith jdoe admin... lpress shortbio.htm The file name

URLs may be shortened shtml#apply_for_scholarships (I shortened the URL using the service at There are others that do the same thing.)

Know the source of a shortened URL

som.csudh.edu/fac/lpress/shortbio.htm You can delete the

What happens if you delete the file name? The Web server will look for a file with a default name, which is specified by the server administrator. Traditional default names are index.htm, Index.html, default.htm, and default.html.

URL summary This request is for a Web (http) server The server program is running on a computer with the domain name som.csudh.edu Look in a subdirectory called fac/lpress If there is a file called shortbio.htm, send it back to the client to be displayed; if not, send an error message back to the client Domain name = the unique name of a computer on the Internet

Questions

Without looking back, can you describe the four parts of a URL and explain what each means? What happens if you misspell the file name in a URL? What happens if you misspell the domain name in a URL? Can you omit the domain name?