Current Assignment(s)

A2: My First Repository
Due: Recommended by Monday, 5.21

Absolute and Relative URLs

Generally, we can think about “finding” a web location in one of two ways: via its relative or absolute address, or URL. Let’s create a scenario to start.

Absolute URLs

Consider the file “profile.jpg” and its URL: https://www.example.com/about/images/profile.jpg

apartment building An absolute URL contains all of the protocols and information for the file’s location. If I am the owner of www.another-example.com and I want to link to “profile.jpg” I will need it’s absolute URL (https://www.example.com/about/images/profile.jpg) as it lives on a separate site than mine.

We can compare this to needing to know the city, street, building, and apartment number of “profile.jpg” because we live in a different part of town.

Relative URLs

apartment building Relative URLs contain no protocols or domain information. This is convenient because they are shorter, but can only reference files in the same path. If I am the owner of www.example.com and am embedding “profile.jpg” on my About page, I can do so relatively with “./images/profile.jpg” as long as the images folder is in the same path as my page. I do not need an absolute URL.

The “.” is a path component stating that we need to remain in the current level of our directory hierarchy. Effectively, it says “to find this file, begin here and then head down inside the images folder, where you’ll find profile.jpg.”

To continue our analogy, since I’m already inside the same building as “profile.jpg,” I only need its apartment number to find it.

This will be handy for you as you start to link to your own images within your repo.