[Tutor] brief description of URL's

[Lloyd Kvam]

A sample URL
http://www.mysite.com/path-to/file?arg1=stuff&arg2=morestuff

http:	scheme of URL (specifies protocol or processing)
//www.mysite.com	is the host.  the name of the computer

That host computer could be offering many services, web sites, email,
time, etc.  Each service is given a number which is how you can specify
the service you want to use.  These numbers are ports.
	http 'listens' at port 80
	smtp (email delivery) listens at port 25
	pop (retrieving email from mailbox) is at port 110
	https (SSL) is at port 443

If you want your software to connect to a different port number, that
can be specified after the host.  So if the www.mysite.com computer were
running a Zope server that listened at port 8080, the URL to connect to
Zope would be
http://www.mysite.com:8080

A user name and password can precede the computer name.  A @ is used to
separate the computer name part from the user identification.

http://myname:mypass@www.mysite.com

The rules for URLs are specified here
http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1738.txt

Google can help you find more.  IANA now provides the registry for URL
schemes along with pointers to documentation.
http://www.iana.org/assignments/uri-schemes



-- 
Lloyd Kvam
Venix Corp