URLs & URIs

URI

A URI identifies a resource either by location, or a name, or both. More often than not, most of us use URIs that defines a location to a resource. The fact that a URI can identify a resources by both name and location has lead to a lot of the confusion in my opionion. A URI has two specializations known as URL and URN.

URN

A URI identifies a resource by name in a given namespace but not define how the resource maybe obtained. This type of URI is called a URN. You may see URNs used in XML Schema documents to define a namespace, usually using a syntax such as:

<xsd:schema xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"
            xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"
            targetNamespace="urn:example"

Here the targetNamespace use a URN. It defines an identifier to the namespace, but it does not define a location.

URL

A URL is a specialization of URI that defines the network location of a specific resource. Unlike a URN, the URL defines how the resource can be obtained. We use URLs every day in the form of http://damnhandy.com, etc. But a URL doesn’t have to be an HTTP URL, it can be ftp://damnhandy.com, smb://damnhandy.com, etc.

The Difference Between Them

So what is the difference between URI and URL? It’s not as clear cut as I would like, but here’s my stab at it:

A URI is an identifier for some resource, but a URL gives you specific information as to obtain that resource. A URI is a URL and as one commenter pointed out, it is now considered incorrect to use URL when describing applications. Generally, if the URL describes both the location and name of a resource, the term to use is URI. Since this is generally the case most of us encounter everyday, URI is the correct term.