3.2.2 http URL

The "http" scheme is used to locate network resources via the HTTP protocol. This section defines the scheme-specific syntax and semantics for http URLs.

       http_URL       = "http:" "//" host [ ":" port ] [ abs_path ]

       host           = <A legal Internet host domain name
                         or IP address (in dotted-decimal form),
                         as defined by Section 2.1 of RFC 1123>

       port           = *DIGIT

If the port is empty or not given, port 80 is assumed. The semantics are that the identified resource is located at the server listening for TCP connections on that port of that host, and the Request-URI for the resource is abs_path. If the abs_path is not present in the URL, it must be given as "/" when used as a Request-URI (Section 5.1.2).

Note: Although the HTTP protocol is independent of the transport layer protocol, the http URL only identifies resources by their TCP location, and thus non-TCP resources must be identified by some other URI scheme.

The canonical form for "http" URLs is obtained by converting any UPALPHA characters in host to their LOALPHA equivalent (hostnames are case-insensitive), eliding the [ ":" port ] if the port is 80, and replacing an empty abs_path with "/".