Editing Uniform Resource Identifier (section)

{{short description|String used to identify a name of a web or internet resource}}
{{Redirect|URI}}
{{Distinguish|URL}}
{{More footnotes|date=February 2024}}
{{Infobox technology standard
| title = Uniform Resource Identifier
| long_name = 
| native_name = RFC 3986
| native_name_lang = en
| status = Active
| year_started = 2005
| first_published = {{Start date|2005|01|}}
| organization = RFC
| image = 
| caption = 
| abbreviation = URI
| authors = [[Tim Berners-Lee]]; [[Roy Thomas Fielding]]; [[Larry Masinter]]
| domain = [[World Wide Web]]
| website = https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc3986#section-1.1
}}
A '''Uniform Resource Identifier''' ('''URI'''), formerly '''Universal Resource Identifier''', is a unique sequence of characters that identifies an abstract or physical resource,{{Sfn|Berners-Lee, Tim; Fielding, Roy T.; Masinter, Larry|2005|p=1|ps=, "Abstract"}} such as resources on a webpage, mail address, phone number,{{Sfn|Berners-Lee, Tim; Fielding, Roy T.; Masinter, Larry|2005|p=7|ps=; "1.1.2.  Examples", "1.1.3.  URI, URL, and URN"}} books, real-world objects such as people and places, concepts.{{Sfn|Berners-Lee, Tim; Fielding, Roy T.; Masinter, Larry|2005|p=5|ps=, "Resource: the term "resource" is used in a general sense for whatever might be identified by a URI"}} URIs are used to identify anything described using the [[Resource Description Framework]] (RDF), for example, concepts that are part of an [[Ontology (information science)|ontology]] defined using the [[Web Ontology Language]] (OWL), and people who are described using the [[FOAF (ontology)|Friend of a Friend vocabulary]] would each have an individual URI.

URIs which provide a means of locating and [[Information retrieval|retrieving]] information resources on a network (either on the Internet or on another private network, such as a computer filesystem or an [[Intranet]]) are [[Uniform Resource Locator]]s (URLs). Therefore, URLs are a subset of URIs, i.e. every URL is a URI (and not necessarily the other way around).{{Sfn|Berners-Lee, Tim; Fielding, Roy T.; Masinter, Larry|2005|p=7|ps=; "1.1.2.  Examples", "1.1.3.  URI, URL, and URN"}} Other URIs provide only a unique name, without a means of locating or retrieving the resource or information about it; these are [[Uniform Resource Name]]s (URNs). The web technologies that use URIs are not limited to [[Web browser|web browsers]].