What parts of URL address do you know and what are they good for?

Experience Level: Junior
Tags: HTTP protocolQuality Assurance (QA)

Answer

As an example let's take the following URL:

https://www.bettercoder.io/JobInterviewQuestions/?q=My+query&a=112#lng=en-US

  • Protocol - https (the part before ://)
    • Thanks to protocol the HTTP client (browser) and the server know how to communicate, whether to use encrypted data transport or not
  • Domain/Subdomain - www.bettercoder.io (the first part after ://)
    • Thanks to the domain the HTTP client (browser) knows to which server it should connect.
  • Path - /JobInterviewQuesions/ (the part between :// and ?)
    • Thanks to the path the HTTP client (browser) knows what resource (web page) to ask for on the server 
  • Query string - ?q=My+query&a=112 (the part between ? and #)
    • Query string gives the developer option to pass additional parameters in the URL (for example for filtering purposes)
  • Hash portion - #lng=en-US (the part after #)
    • Hash portion is used to navigate to the specific anchor in browser. It can also be used by front-end applications to route between pages.
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HTTP protocol for beginners
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