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URI’s full form is Uniform Resource Identifier. It is a general term for all names and addresses that show objects on the World Wide Web (www). It is usually a sequence of characters that identifies the name and location of a logical resource or a file or resource in a similar format.
Types Of URIs
As mentioned in the above figure, there are two types of URI:
- URL: URL (Uniform Resource Locator) specifies a location on the computer network and technique for retrieving it.
- URN: URN (Uniform Resource Name) is an internet resource that specifies URN scheme.
Difference between URI and URL
Here are the main differences between URI and URL:
| URI | URL |
|---|---|
| URI stands for Uniform Resource Identifier. | URL stands for Uniform Resource Locator. |
| A URI is a superset of URL that identifies a resource either by URL or URN (Uniform Resource Name) or both. | URL is a subset of URI that specifies where a resource is exists and the mechanism for retrieving it. |
| The main aim of URI is to find a resource and differentiate it from other resources using either name or location. | The main aim is to get the location or address of a resource |
| Used in HTML, XML and other files XSLT (Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformations) and more. | URL is used to locate only web pages |
| In URI, the scheme may be anything like a protocol, specification, name, etc. | The scheme must be a protocol like HTTP, FTP, HTTPS, etc. |
| There is no protocol information given in URI. | Protocol information is given in the URL. |
| Example of URI: urn:isbn:0-486-27557-4 | Example of URL: https://google.com |
| It contains components like scheme, authority, path, query, fragment component, etc. | It contains components such as protocol, domain, path, hash, query string, etc. |
| Not all URIs are URLs since a URI can be a name instead of a locator. | All URLs can be URIs |