Network Working Group P. Hoffman Internet-Draft VPN Consortium Expires: March 19, 2005 September 18, 2004 The file URI Scheme draft-hoffman-file-uri-01.txt Status of this Memo By submitting this Internet-Draft, I certify that any applicable patent or other IPR claims of which I am aware have been disclosed, and any of which I become aware will be disclosed, in accordance with RFC 3668. Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), its areas, and its working groups. Note that other groups may also distribute working documents as Internet-Drafts. Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference material or to cite them other than as "work in progress." The list of current Internet-Drafts can be accessed at http://www.ietf.org/ietf/1id-abstracts.txt. The list of Internet-Draft Shadow Directories can be accessed at http://www.ietf.org/shadow.html. This Internet-Draft will expire on March 19, 2005. Copyright Notice Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2004). All Rights Reserved. Abstract This document specifies the file Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) scheme that was originally specified in RFC 1738. The purpose of this document is to allow RFC 1738 to be moved to historic while keeping the information about the scheme on standards track. 1. Introduction URIs are were previously defined in RFC 2396 [RFC2396], which was updated by draft-fielding-uri-rfc2396bis [2396bis]. Those documents also specify how to define schemes for URIs. Hoffman Expires March 19, 2005 [Page 1] Internet-Draft The file URI Scheme September 2004 The first definition for many URI schemes appeared in RFC 1738 [RFC1738]. Because that document has been moved to Historic status, this document copies the file URI scheme from it to allow that material to remain on standards track. 2. Scheme Definition The file URL scheme is used to designate files accessible on a particular host computer. This scheme, unlike most other URL schemes, does not designate a resource that is universally accessible over the Internet. The file URL scheme has historically had little or no interoperability between platforms. Further, implementers on a single platform have often disagreed on the syntaxt to use for a particular filesystem. This docoument does not try to resolve those problems, only to show what has been commonly seen in use on the Internet. A file URL takes the form: file:/// where is the fully qualified domain name of the system on which the is accessible, and is a hierarchical directory path of the form //.../. As a special case, can be the string "localhost" or the empty string; this is interpreted as "the machine from which the URL is being interpreted". However, this part of the syntax has been ignored on many systems. That is, for some systems, the following are considered equal, while on others they are not: file://localhost/path/to/file.txt file:///path/to/file.txt Some systems allow URLs to point to directories. In this case, there is usually (but not always) a terminating "/" character, such as in: file://usr/local/bin/ On systems running some versions of Microsoft Windows, the local drive specification is sometimes preceded by a "/" character. Thus, for a file called "example.ini" in the "windows" directory on the "c:" drive, the URL might be: file:///c:/windows/example.ini Hoffman Expires March 19, 2005 [Page 2] Internet-Draft The file URI Scheme September 2004 For Windows shares, there is an additional "/" prepended to the name. Thus, the file "example.doc" on the shared directory "department" would have the URL: file:////department/example.doc The file URL scheme is unusual in that it does not specify an Internet protocol or access method for such files; as such, its utility in network protocols between hosts is limited. 3. Implementation Notes 3.1 Hierarchical Structure Most implementations of the file URI scheme do a reasonable job of mapping the hierarchical part of a directory structure into the "/" delimited hierarchy of the URI syntax, independent of what the native platform delimiter is. For example, on Windows platforms, it is typical that the file system presents backslash "\" as the file delimeter for file names, yet the URI's forward slash "/" can be used in file: URIs. Similarly, on (some) Macintosh OS versions, at least in some contexts, the colon (":") is used as the delimiter in the native presentation of file path names. Unix systems natively use the same forward slash "/" delimiter for hierarchy, so there is a closer mapping between file paths and native path names. 3.2 Drives, drive letters, mount points, file system root There is considerable difference, in practice, for handling of the syntax for the "top" of the hierarchy. The file URI syntax provides on simple place for designating the root of the file hierachy, and implementations have diverged, even on the same platform, sometimes even within a single application. For example, DOS- and Windows-based systems support the notion of a "drive letter", a single character which represents a (virtual) drive, mount point, or device. Native representations of file paths start with the drive letter, a colon, and then the path; e.g., "c:\tmp\test.txt". Drive letters are mapped into the top of a file URI in various ways, depending on the implementation; some applications substitute vertical bar ("|") for the colon after the drive letter, yielding "file:///c|/tmp/test.txt". In some cases, the colon is left unchanged, as in "file:///c:/tmp/test.txt". In other cases, the colon is simply omitted, as in "file:///c/tmp/test.txt". Hoffman Expires March 19, 2005 [Page 3] Internet-Draft The file URI Scheme September 2004 3.3 Use of hostname and host name checking The file URI specification calls for using the actual host name as the name authority and allowing it to be omitted. This practice is rarely followed, and frequently is not checked. Some applications generate URIs with no authority component at all, such as "file:/ this/is/the/path". 3.4 Character sets and encodings Local file systems sometimes use many different encodings for representing file names. For interoperability sake, it would be preferable for file: URI libraries to translate the native character encoding for file names to and from Unicode. 4. Security Considerations There are many security considerations for URI schemes discussed in draft-fielding-uri-rfc2396bis [2396bis]. 5 Informative References [RFC1738] Berners-Lee, T., Masinter, L. and M. McCahill, "Uniform Resource Locators (URL)", RFC 1738, December 1994. [RFC2396] Berners-Lee, T., Fielding, R. and L. Masinter, "Uniform Resource Identifiers (URI): Generic Syntax", RFC 2396, August 1998. [2396bis] Berners-Lee, T., Fielding, R. and L. Masinter, "Uniform Resource Identifiers (URI): Generic Syntax", work in progress, draft-fielding-uri-rfc2396bis-nn.txt. Author's Address Paul Hoffman VPN Consortium 127 Segre Place Santa Cruz, CA 95060 US EMail: paul.hoffman@vpnc.org Hoffman Expires March 19, 2005 [Page 4] Internet-Draft The file URI Scheme September 2004 Intellectual Property Statement The IETF takes no position regarding the validity or scope of any Intellectual Property Rights or other rights that might be claimed to pertain to the implementation or use of the technology described in this document or the extent to which any license under such rights might or might not be available; nor does it represent that it has made any independent effort to identify any such rights. Information on the procedures with respect to rights in RFC documents can be found in BCP 78 and BCP 79. 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Disclaimer of Validity This document and the information contained herein are provided on an "AS IS" basis and THE CONTRIBUTOR, THE ORGANIZATION HE/SHE REPRESENTS OR IS SPONSORED BY (IF ANY), THE INTERNET SOCIETY AND THE INTERNET ENGINEERING TASK FORCE DISCLAIM ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANY WARRANTY THAT THE USE OF THE INFORMATION HEREIN WILL NOT INFRINGE ANY RIGHTS OR ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. Copyright Statement Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2004). This document is subject to the rights, licenses and restrictions contained in BCP 78, and except as set forth therein, the authors retain all their rights. Acknowledgment Funding for the RFC Editor function is currently provided by the Internet Society. Hoffman Expires March 19, 2005 [Page 5]