Let’s put the picture first

URL (URL) A Uniform Resource Locator Thatidentifies the location of an Internet Resource as specified by the RFC Uniform Resource Locator is used to identify the location of network resources.

URI (URI, A Uniform Resource Identifier that identifies an abstract or physical Resource, The uniform resource Identifier is used to identify an abstract or physical resource.

That is, A URI is an abstract, high-level concept that defines a uniform resource identity, while a URL is a concrete resource identity. A URL is a URI.

Little story

First of all, let me give you an example. One day, the general manager of a company gave me a business card with his title, Zhang SAN, general manager of Beijing XXX Company, and his office address, Beijing XXX Company General manager’s office, 35 Chang ‘an Street, Haidian District, Beijing. Then, I will brag to my friends. Beijing XXX company general manager zhang SAN, I know my friends all know Beijing general manager of the XXX company is a man called zhang SAN, so, the title and match them with the zhang SAN, as long as it comes to the title, said zhang SAN is known to all, the reaction to the online world, the title is called a URI, as long as you give me a URI, I know what it stands for. For example, www.sina.com.cn stands for Sina.com, [email protected] stands for someone’s QQ mailbox. Your QQ number is also a URI(which can be identified as your QQ account in Tencent server), and URI is the title of network resources. Everything in the online world is marked and distinguished by THE URI tag.

Ok, now there is a problem, you now know that the general manager of Beijing XXX company is Zhang SAN, “Beijing XXX company general manager” is the URI of Zhang SAN, but I asked you to personally meet with Zhang SAN, can you do it? Are you sure you can’t do that, because you don’t know his address, though you have his the URI of the title, but in addition to this, you do not know anything about his specific situation, so you want to locate to him, you must get his office address, through the “haidian district of Beijing chang an avenue Beijing XXX company general manager office 35,” this address, you will find the zhang SAN. Reflecting the network world, every resource in the network world not only has its own title, but also can be accessed and found by people. Therefore, the network address is necessary, otherwise, the existence of this network resource is meaningless, and this address is called URL.

From the description above, you can see that THE URI emphasizes naming the resource tag, and the URL emphasizes locating the resource, but you can see that the URL contains much more information than the URI. I also know that Zhang SAN is the general manager through the URL, and I also know his address. So most of the time you think to a web resource naming and respectively given address too much trouble, just use the address as both addresses, and used as a tag name, so, also ACTS as the WWW web URL where the roles of the URI, but he is more than a URI with a layer of meaning, I not only know what’s your name, I also know where you are. What we type in the browser is a URL, because we’re typing in to find a resource, and of course it’s ok if you type in a URI, because a URL is also a URI.