Web servers are able to map the path component of a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) into:
* a local file system resource (for static requests);
* an internal or external program name (for dynamic requests).
For a static request the URL path specified by the client is relative to the Web server's root directory.
Consider the following URL as it would be requested by a client:
http://www.example.com/path/file.htmlThe client's user agent will translate it into a connection to
www.example.com with the following HTTP 1.1 request:
GET /path/file.html HTTP/1.1
Host:
www.example.comThe Web server on
www.example.com will append the given path to the path of its root directory. On Unix machines, this is commonly /var/www. The result is the local file system resource:
/var/www/path/file.html
The Web server will then read the file, if it exists, and send a response to the client's Web browser. The response will describe the content of the file and contain the file itself.