URL Implementation

🌲

An URL manipulation library that supports URL records, relative URLs, reference resolution and a number of other elementary operations on URLs in a way that is compatible with the WHATWG URL Standard.

This library serves as a reference implementation for this URL Specification, which is an alternative URL specification that rephrases and generalises the WHATWG URL Standard to add support for relative URLs, reference resolution and a number of other elementary operations, as wel as restoring a formal grammar.

Always feel free to ask questions. If you wish, you may file an issue for a question.

People are encouraged to experiment with creating more high level APIs around this library. One example is my reurl library, which wraps around spec-url to provide a high level API for immutable URL objects.

API

The library exposes a concise, low-level API for working with URL strings and URL records. It models URLs as plain javascript objects and it exposes a number of functions for working with them.

URL

In this implementation an URL is modeled as a plain JavaScript object with the following optional attributes:

• scheme, user, pass, host, port, drive, root, dirs, file, query, hash

If present, dirs is an non-empty array of strings; host is a Host (see below) and all other attributes are strings. The string valued attributes are subject to the constraints as described in my URL Specification.

A Host is either an ipv6 address, a domain, an ipv4 address, or an opaque host. In this implementation these are modeled as an array of numbers, an array of strings, a number, or a string, respectively.

The URL Specification models URLs as ordered sequences of components, "with at most one component per type, except for dir componens, of which it may have any amount". Futhermore, the username, password, host and port are nested inside an authority component.

In this this library URLs are modeled as plain JavaScript objects. The dir componens, if present, are collected into a single dirs array, and the authority, if present, is expanded by setting any of its user, pass, host and port constituents directly on the url object itself.

There is a one-to-one correspondence between this representation and sequences of components as defined in the URL specification.

Bsics

• componentTypes — { scheme, auth, drive, root, dir, file, query, hash } — aka. ords
• ord (url)
• upto (url, ord)

Rebase and Resolve

The rebase function is the preferred method for composing URLs. It can be thought of as a resolve function for relative URLs. The rebase function does not attempt to parse opaque hosts as a domain, and does not enforce additional requirements on the authority.

• rebase (url-or-string, base-url-or-string)
  • aka. goto (base-url-or-string, url-or-string) — (flipped arguments, deprecated)
  • aka. parseRebase (url-or-string, base-url-or-string)

The resolve function is similar to rebase but it always produces an absolute URL, or throws an error if it is unable to do so. It coerces special URLs to have an authority, and parses their hosts as a domain. It enforces that file URLs do not have a user, pass nor port. NB this converts the first non-empty path segment of a web-URL to an authority if this is needed.

• resolve (url-or-string [, base-url-or-string])
  • aka. parseResolve
  • aka. WHATWGResolve

Normalisation

• normalise (url) — aka. normalize
• percentEncode (url)
• percentDecode (url)

Parsing

• modes — { generic, web, file, noscheme }
• modeFor (url, fallback)
• parse (string [, mode])
• parsePath (string [, mode])
• parseAuth (string)
• parseHost (string-or-host)
• validateOpaqueHost (string)
• parseRebase (string [, base-url-or-string])
• parseResolve (string [, base-url-or-string])

Printing

• print (url)
• printHost (host)
• pathname (url)
• filePath (url) — returns a filesystem–path-string
• unsafePrint (url)

Host Parsing

• ipv4
  • parse (string)
  • print (number)
  • normalise (string)
• ipv6
  • parse (string)
  • print (num-array)
  • normalise (string)

Changelog

Forthcoming

Work has started on a simple API wrapper.

Version 2.4.0-dev

• Exports a parsePath (input [, mode]) function.
• Includes proper IDNA domain name handling via tr46.
• Removes the forceAsFileUrl, forceAsWebUrl and force functions.
• Behind the scenes: A new table-driven URL parser.

Version 2.3.3-dev

• Exports the printHost function.
• Restores genericResolve to its pre 2.3.2-dev behaviour.

Version 2.3.2-dev

• The rebase function now distinguishes URLs by their scheme akin to (WHATWG) resolve.
• Dotted file-segments are now parsed as dir segments.
• Corrects a mistake where path normalisation could result in an empty URL.
• Corrects a mistake where path normalisation would incorrectly discard leading double-dot segments.

Version 2.3.1-dev

• Corrects a mistake where scheme-less URLs were in fact not handled as suggested in the latest release notes.
• The parser no longer enforces that web-URLs have a non-empty host, this is enforced just before resolution only.

Version 2.3.0-dev

Towards a simple API without modes; towards loosening the constraints on the model a bit, and enforcing them in the resolution operation:

• The goto (url2, url1) operation has been renamed to rebase (url1, url2).
• Scheme-less URLs are now separated out to use a default noscheme mode.
• Scheme-less URLs are now always percent-encoded akin to special URLs.
• The model for the host has changed to distinguish between a domain, an IPv4 address, an IPv6 address and an opaque host.
• The authority parser has been rewritten.
• Forcing and host parsing has been refactored.
• The authority constraints on file- and web-URLs are enforced in the force operation.

Version 2.2.0-dev

• Exports unsafePrint, pathname and filePath functions.
• Exports parseResolve as an alias for WHATWGParseResolve.
• Exports an errors (obj) functon to return a list of violated structural constraints, if any.
• Catch up with WHATWG changes: C0-control and DEL codepoints are no longer allowed in domains.
• Prevent reparse bugs for relative URLs that start with a scheme-like dir or file component.
• Fix a regression where non-character codepoints were not correctly percent encoded.

Version 2.1.0-dev

• Refactored the percent coding, making it possible to convert URL-objects to a valid URI (RFC3986), a valid URL, or as specified by the WHATWG, to a normalised but potentially invalid URL.
• Catching up with WHATWG changes: the host parser will now raise an error on domains that end in a number.
• Removed the isBase method in favour of an hasOpaquePath method.

Version 2.0.0-dev.1

• Changes to the API for forcing and reference resolution.
• A fix for normalisation of opaque-path-URL that resulted in a difference in behaviour with the WHATWG Standard.

Version 1.5.0

• Includes both a CommonJS version and an ES Module. 🌿
• Includes various changes from the 2.x.x-dev versions:
• Exports the pathname and unsafePrint functions.
• Exports parseResolve as an alias for WHATWGParseResolve.
• The host parser will now raise an error on domains that end in a number.
• Includes a fix for normalisation of opaque-path-URL that resulted in a difference in behaviour with the WHATWG Standard.
• Prevents reparse bugs for scheme-less URLs that start with a scheme-like path component.

Version 1.4.0

• Converted the project from a CommonJS module to an EcmaScript module
• ⚠️ This should have been considered a breaking change.

Version 1.3.0

• Use strict resolution for generic URLs, in accordance with the WHATWG standard.
• Expose a strictness option on the resolve operations.

Version 1.2.0

• Expose a WHATWGParseResolve (string, base-string) to work similar to the WHATWG URL constructor — new URL (string, base-string).

Licence

• Code original to this project is MIT licenced, copyright Alwin Blok.
• The punycode.js library is MIT licenced, copyright Mathias Bynens.
• The tr46 library is MIT licenced, copyright Sebastian Mayr.