What is an URL Path?
An URL path is the part of an URL after the domain name, e.g. /articles/2546/url-pathhttps://www.virtualcuriosities.com/articles/2546/url-path, but before an interrogation mark (?) or hash sign (#).
All URLs on the web have a path, and they all start with a forward slash (/).
For example, if you type google.com in your address bar, you'll go to Google's homepage, whose URL is https://www.google.com/. We can split this URL into three parts: the protocol, https, the domain name, www.domain.com, and the URL path, /.
Complicated Cases
Some URLs contain the port to connect to, and an IP address instead of a domain name. The path always goes after these parameters. For example, in the URL http://127.0.0.1:8080/search, the path is /search.
The path doesn't include the query parameters and fragment in the URL, e.g. if the URL ends in /search?q=123&sort=newest#results, then /search is the path, ?q=123&sort=newest are the query parameters, and #results is the fragment.
Some URLs don't have paths, but they aren't URLs for webpages. For example, blob, data, mailto, and tel protocols don't have a path. Conversely, some non-HTTP protocols do have paths, such as ftp, and git.
External Knowledge
- https://www.w3.org/Addressing/URL/url-spec.txt (accessed 2024-10-20)
The 1994 URL specification.