Absolute urls, relative urls, and…?

Question

I am writing some documentation and I have a little vocabulary problem:

1. http://www.example.com/en/public/img/logo.gif is called an "absolute" url, right?
2. ../../public/img/logo.gif is called a "relative" url, right?
3. so how do you call this: /en/public/img/logo.gif ?

Is it also considered an "absolute url", although without the protocol and domain parts?

Or is it considered a relative url, but relative to the root of the domain?

I googled a bit and some people categorize this as absolute, and others as relative.

What should I call it? A "semi-absolute url"? Or "semi-relative"? Is there another word?

Answer 1

Keep in mind just how many segments of the URL can be omited, making them relative (note: its all of them, just about). These are all valid URLs:

• http://example.com/bar?baz
• ?qoo=qalue
• /bar2
• dat/sly
• //auth.example.com (most people are surprised by this one! Will use http or https, depending on the current resource)
• #anchor

Answer 2

I have seen it called a root relative URL.

Answer 3

It is sometimes called a virtual url, for example in SSI:

<!--#include virtual = "/lib/functions.js" -->

Answer 4

From the Microsoft's documentation about Absolute and Relative URLs

A URL specifies the location of a target stored on a local or networked computer. The target can be a file, directory, HTML page, image, program, and so on.

An absolute URL contains all the information necessary to locate a resource.

A relative URL locates a resource using an absolute URL as a starting point. In effect, the "complete URL" of the target is specified by concatenating the absolute and relative URLs.

An absolute URL uses the following format: scheme://server/path/resource

A relative URL typically consists only of the path, and optionally, the resource, but no scheme or server. The following tables define the individual parts of the complete URL format.

• scheme - Specifies how the resource is to be accessed.

• server - Specifies the name of the computer where the resource is located.

• path - Specifies the sequence of directories leading to the target. If resource is omitted, the target is the last directory in path.

• resource - If included, resource is the target, and is typically the name of a file. It may be a simple file, containing a single binary stream of bytes, or a structured document, containing one or more storages and binary streams of bytes.

Answer 5

Facebook would call /en/public/img/logo.gif a protocol-relative URL (see their batch API).

Answer 6

Here are the URL components:

http://www.example.com/en/public/img/logo.gif
\__/   \_____________/\_____________________/
 #1     #2             #3

1. scheme/protocol
2. host
3. path

A URL is called an absolute URL if it begins with the scheme and scheme specific part (here // after http:). Anything else is a relative URL.

A URL path is called an absolute URL path if it begins with a /. Any other URL path is called a relative URL path.

Thus:

• http://www.example.com/en/public/img/logo.gif is a absolute URL,
• ../../public/img/logo.gif is a relative URL with a relative URL path and
• /en/public/img/logo.gif is a relative URL with an absolute URL path.

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Note: The current definition of URI (RFC 3986) is different from the old URL definition (RFC 1738 and RFC 1808).

The three examples with URI terms:

• http://www.example.com/en/public/img/logo.gif is a URI,
• ../../public/img/logo.gif is a relative reference with just a relative path and
• /en/public/img/logo.gif is a relative reference with just an absolute path.