|  |  |         (message, document, or none).        |  |  |
      |  |  `----------------------------------------------'  |  |
      |  | (5.1.3) URI used to retrieve the entity            |  |
      |  `----------------------------------------------------'  |
      | (5.1.4) Default Base URI is application-dependent        |
      `----------------------------------------------------------'




 
RFC 2396                   URI Generic Syntax                August 1998


5.1.1. Base URI within Document Content

   Within certain document media types, the base URI of the document can
   be embedded within the content itself such that it can be readily
   obtained by a parser.  This can be useful for descriptive documents,
   such as tables of content, which may be transmitted to others through
   protocols other than their usual retrieval context (e.g., E-Mail or
   USENET news).

   It is beyond the scope of this document to specify how, for each
   media type, the base URI can be embedded.  It is assumed that user
   agents manipulating such media types will be able to obtain the
   appropriate syntax from that media type's specification.  An example
   of how the base URI can be embedded in the Hypertext Markup Language
   (HTML) [RFC1866] is provided in Appendix D.

   A mechanism for embedding the base URI within MIME container types
   (e.g., the message and multipart types) is defined by MHTML
   [RFC2110].  Protocols that do not use the MIME message header syntax,
   but which do allow some form of tagged metainformation to be included
   within messages, may define their own syntax for defining the base
   URI as part of a message.

5.1.2. Base URI from the Encapsulating Entity

   If no base URI is embedded, the base URI of a document is defined by
   the document's retrieval context.  For a document that is enclosed
   within another entity (such as a message or another document), the
   retrieval context is that entity; thus, the default base URI of the
   document is the base URI of the entity in which the document is
   encapsulated.

5.1.3. Base URI from the Retrieval URI

   If no base URI is embedded and the document is not encapsulated
   within some other entity (e.g., the top level of a composite entity),
   then, if a URI was used to retrieve the base document, that URI shall
   be considered the base URI.  Note that if the retrieval was the
   result of a redirected request, the last URI used (i.e., that which
   resulted in the actual retrieval of the document) is the base URI.

5.1.4. Default Base URI

   If none of the conditions described in Sections 5.1.1--5.1.3 apply,
   then the base URI is defined by the context of the application.
   Since this definition is necessarily application-dependent, failing






 
RFC 2396                   URI Generic Syntax                August 1998


   to define the base URI using one of the other methods may result in
   the same content being interpreted differently by different types of
   application.

   It is the responsibility of the distributor(s) of a document
   containing relative URI to ensure that the base URI for that document
   can be established.  It must be emphasized that relative URI cannot
   be used reliably in situations where the document's base URI is not
   well-defined.

5.2. Resolving Relative References to Absolute Form

   This section describes an example algorithm for resolving URI
   references that might be relative to a given base URI.

   The base URI is established according to the rules of Section 5.1 and
   parsed into the four main components as described in Section 3.  Note
   that only the scheme component is required to be present in the base
   URI; the other components may be empty or undefined.  A component is
   undefined if its preceding separator does not appear in the URI
   reference; the path component is never undefined, though it may be
   empty.  The base URI's query component is not used by the resolution
   algorithm and may be discarded.

   For each URI reference, the following steps are performed in order:

   1) The URI reference is parsed into the potential four components and
      fragment identifier, as described in Section 4.3.

   2) If the path component is empty and the scheme, authority, and