URI Design and Ownership
RFC 7320
Document | Type |
RFC - Best Current Practice
(July 2014; Errata)
Obsoleted by RFC 8820
Updates RFC 3986
Also known as BCP 190
|
|
---|---|---|---|
Author | Mark Nottingham | ||
Last updated | 2020-01-21 | ||
Replaces | draft-nottingham-uri-get-off-my-lawn | ||
Stream | IETF | ||
Formats | plain text html pdf htmlized with errata bibtex | ||
Reviews | |||
Stream | WG state | Submitted to IESG for Publication | |
Document shepherd | Martin Thomson | ||
Shepherd write-up | Show (last changed 2014-04-07) | ||
IESG | IESG state | RFC 7320 (Best Current Practice) | |
Consensus Boilerplate | Yes | ||
Telechat date | |||
Responsible AD | Barry Leiba | ||
Send notices to | (None) | ||
IANA | IANA review state | Version Changed - Review Needed | |
IANA action state | No IANA Actions |
Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) M. Nottingham Request for Comments: 7320 BCP: 190 July 2014 Updates: 3986 Category: Best Current Practice ISSN: 2070-1721 URI Design and Ownership Abstract Section 1.1.1 of RFC 3986 defines URI syntax as "a federated and extensible naming system wherein each scheme's specification may further restrict the syntax and semantics of identifiers using that scheme." In other words, the structure of a URI is defined by its scheme. While it is common for schemes to further delegate their substructure to the URI's owner, publishing independent standards that mandate particular forms of URI substructure is inappropriate, because that essentially usurps ownership. This document further describes this problematic practice and provides some acceptable alternatives for use in standards. Status of This Memo This memo documents an Internet Best Current Practice. This document is a product of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). It represents the consensus of the IETF community. It has received public review and has been approved for publication by the Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG). Further information on BCPs is available in Section 2 of RFC 5741. Information about the current status of this document, any errata, and how to provide feedback on it may be obtained at http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7320. Nottingham Best Current Practice [Page 1] RFC 7320 URI Design Ownership July 2014 Copyright Notice Copyright (c) 2014 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the document authors. All rights reserved. This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal Provisions Relating to IETF Documents (http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of publication of this document. Please review these documents carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect to this document. Code Components extracted from this document must include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as described in the Simplified BSD License. Table of Contents 1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 1.1. Intended Audience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 1.2. Notational Conventions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 2. Best Current Practices for Standardizing Structured URIs . . 4 2.1. URI Schemes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 2.2. URI Authorities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 2.3. URI Paths . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 2.4. URI Queries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 2.5. URI Fragment Identifiers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 3. Alternatives to Specifying Structure in URIs . . . . . . . . 7 4. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 5. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 5.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 5.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Appendix A. Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 1. Introduction URIs [RFC3986] very often include structured application data. This might include artifacts from filesystems (often occurring in the path component) and user information (often in the query component). In some cases, there can even be application-specific data in the authority component (e.g., some applications are spread across several hostnames to enable a form of partitioning or dispatch). Furthermore, constraints upon the structure of URIs can be imposed by an implementation; for example, many Web servers use the filename extension of the last path segment to determine the media type of the response. Likewise, prepackaged applications often have highly structured URIs that can only be changed in limited ways (often, just the hostname and port on which they are deployed). Nottingham Best Current Practice [Page 2] RFC 7320 URI Design Ownership July 2014 Because the owner of the URI (as defined in [webarch] Section 2.2.2.1) is choosing to use the server or the application, this can be seen as reasonable delegation of authority. However, when such conventions are mandated by a party other than the owner, it can have several potentially detrimental effects: o Collisions - As more ad hoc conventions for URI structure become standardized, it becomes more likely that there will be collisions between them (especially considering that servers, applications,Show full document text