The file URI Scheme
draft-kerwin-file-scheme-04

Abstract

This document specifies the file Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) scheme that was originally specified in [RFC1738]. The purpose of this document is to keep the information about the scheme on standards track, since [RFC1738] has been made obsolete.

Note to Readers

This draft should be discussed on its github project page [github].

Status of This Memo

This Internet-Draft is submitted to IETF in full conformance with the provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.

Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). Note that other groups may also distribute working documents as Internet-Drafts. The list of current Internet-Drafts is at http://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/.

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This Internet-Draft will expire on December 29, 2013.

Copyright Notice

Copyright (c) 2013 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the document authors. All rights reserved.

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Table of Contents

• 1. Introduction
• 1.1. Conventions and Terminology
• 2. History
• 3. Scheme Definition
• 4. Implementation Notes
• 4.1. Hierarchical Structure
• 4.2. Relative file paths
• 4.3. Drives, drive letters, mount points, file system root
• 4.4. UNC File Paths
• 4.5. Namespaces
• 4.6. Character sets and encodings
• 5. Security Considerations
• 6. IANA Considerations
• 7. Acknowledgements
• 8. References
• 8.1. Normative References
• 8.2. Informative References
• Author's Address

1. Introduction

URIs were previously defined in [RFC1738], which was updated by [RFC3986]. Those documents also specify how to define schemes for URIs.

The first definition for many URI schemes appeared in [RFC1738]. Because that document has been made obsolete, this document copies the file URI scheme from it to allow that material to remain on standards track.

1.1. Conventions and Terminology

The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in [RFC2119].

2. History

The file URI scheme was first defined in [RFC1630], an informational RFC which does not specify an Internet standard of any kind. The definition was standardised in [RFC1738], and the scheme was registered with the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) [IANA-URI-Schemes]; however the latter definition omitted certain language included by former that clarified aspects such as:

• the use of slashes to donate boundaries between directory levels of a hierarchical file system
• the requirement that client software convert the file: URL into a file name in the local file name conventions
• a justification for defining the scheme.

The Internet draft [I-D.draft-hoffman-file-uri] was written in an effort to keep the file URI scheme on standards track when [RFC1738] was made obsolete, but that draft expired in 2005. It enumerated concerns arising from the various, often conflicting implementations of the scheme.

The file URI scheme defined in [RFC1738] is referenced three times in the current URI Generic Syntax standard [RFC3986], despite the former's obsoletion:

1. Section 1.1 uses "file:///etc/hosts" as an example
2. Section 1.2.3 mentions the "file" scheme regarding relative references
3. Section 3.2.2 says that '...the "file" URI scheme is defined so that no authority, an empty host, and "localhost" all mean the end-user's machine...'.

Finally the WHATWG defines a living URL standard [WHATWG-URL], which includes algorithms for interpreting file URIs.

3. Scheme Definition

The file URI scheme is used to designate files accessible on a particular host computer. This scheme, unlike most other URI schemes, does not designate a resource that is universally accessible over the Internet.

The file URI scheme has historically had little or no interoperability between platforms. Further, implementers on a single platform have often disagreed on the syntax to use for a particular filesystem. This document attempts to resolve those problems, and define a standard scheme which is interoperable between different extant and future implementations. Additionally, it aims to ease implementation by conforming to a general syntax that allows existing machinery to parse file: URIs.

Note that file: and ftp: URIs are not the same, even when the target of the ftp: URI is the local host.

file:///usr/local/bin/

The syntax of a file: URI conforms with the generic syntax presented in [RFC3986], with the following components:

scheme name

The literal value file

authority

If present, either the fully qualified domain name of the system on which the file is accessible; or one of the special values localhost or the empty string (""), in which case it is interpreted as "the machine from which the URI is being interpreted". An absent authority component localhost.

A host name, if supplied, is intended to inform a client on a remote machine that it cannot access the file system, or perhaps to use some other mechanism to access the file. It does not imply that the file should be accessible over a network connection.

path

The hierarchical directory path to the file, using the slash character ("/") to separate directories. Implementations Section 4.1)

Some systems allow file: URIs to point to directories. In this case, there is usually (but not always) a terminating slash character, such as in:

Because the file URI scheme does not define a retrieval mechanism for dereferencing a file: URI, the semantics of a query or fragment component are considered unknown and are effectively unconstrained. A protocol or system that utilises the file URI scheme file: URIs it uses.

Systems exhibit different levels of case-sensitivity. Implementations file: URIs to and from the local system's representation of file paths, and any systems or devices that transport file: URIs file: URIs they transport.

4. Implementation Notes

4.1. Hierarchical Structure

Most implementations of the file URI scheme do a reasonable job of mapping the hierarchical part of a directory structure into the slash ("/") delimited hierarchy of the URI syntax, independent of the native platform's delimiter.

For example, on Microsoft 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: URI paths and native path names.

In accordance with Section 3.3 of [RFC3986], the path segments . and .., also known as dot-segments, are only interpreted within the URI path hierarchy and are removed as part of the resolution process ([RFC3986], Section 5.2). Implementations operating on or interacting with systems that allow dot-segments in their resolved native path representation may be required to escape those segments using some other means.

4.2. Relative file paths

file:a/b/c

As relative references are resolved into their respective (absolute) target URIs, according to Section 5 of [RFC3986], before any dereferencing can take place, this document does not describe that resolution. However, a fully resolved file: URI may contain a non-absolute file path. For example, the URI: c, in directory b, in directory a, on the machine on which the URI is being interpreted (i.e. localhost); however there is no apparent indication of the location of the directory a on that machine. By convention an absolute file path would begin with a slash character ("/") on a Unix-based system, or a drive letter (e.g. "c:\") on a Microsoft Windows system, etc.

Resolution of relative file paths is left undefined by this specification.

4.3. Drives, drive letters, mount points, file system root

Historically there has been considerable difference, in practice, for handling of the syntax for the "top" of the hierarchy. The file: URI syntax provides one 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, Microsoft 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.

file:///c:/TMP/test.txt
file:///c|/TMP/test.txt
file:///c/TMP/test.txt

c:\TMP\test.txt

Drive letters are mapped into the top of a file: URI in various ways. On systems running some versions of Microsoft Windows, the drive letter may be specified with a colon character (":"), however sometimes the colon is replaced with a pipe character ("|"), and in some implementations the colon is omitted entirely. The three representations

Implementations

Note that some systems running some versions of Microsoft Windows are known to omit the slash before the drive letter, effectively replacing the authority component with the drive specification. In line with Postel's robustness principle ("an implementation must be conservative in its sending behavior, and liberal in its receiving behavior" [RFC791]) implementations that are likely to encounter such a URI

4.4. UNC File Paths

\\server.example.com\Share\path\to\file.doc

file:////server.example.com/Share/path/to/file.doc
       \_________________________________________/
                  translated UNC path

File names encoded using the Universal Naming Convention (UNC) [MS-DTYP], for example Windows shares accessed via the SMB/CIFS protocol [MS-SMB2], file: URI, including both leading slashes. For example, the UNC path

According to [RFC3986], a URI that does not contain an authority component cannot begin with two slash characters ("//"). Therefore a file: URI that includes a UNC path MUST include an authority component.

Note that the hostname part of a UNC path refers to the server or domain hosting the shared resource, and is usually different from the host part of the file: URI, which describes the machine from which the UNC hostname can be resolved.

The file URI scheme is unusual in that it does not specify an Internet protocol or access method for shared files; as such, its utility in network protocols between hosts is limited.

4.5. Namespaces

The Microsoft Windows API defines Win32 Namespaces [Win32-Namespaces] for interacting with files and devices using Windows API functions. These namespaced paths are prefixed by \\?\ for Win32 File Namespaces and \\.\ for Win32 Device Namespaces. There is also a special case for UNC file paths [MS-DTYP] in Win32 File Namespaces, using the prefix \\?\UNC\.

This document does not define a mechanism for encoding namespaced file paths into file: URIs.

4.6. Character sets and encodings

Local file systems sometimes use many different encodings for representing file names. The URI syntax defined in [RFC3986] provides a method of encoding data, presumably for the sake of identifying a resource, as a sequence of characters. The URI characters are, in turn, frequently encoded as octets for transport or presentation. This specification does not mandate any particular character encoding for mapping between URI characters and the octets used to store or transmit those characters, however for the sake of interoperability, file: URI libraries [UNICODE] encoded as UTF-8 [RFC3629] and then percent-encoded into valid ASCII [RFC20].

A protocol or system that utilises the file URI scheme file: URIs it uses, and

5. Security Considerations

There are many security considerations for URI schemes discussed in [RFC3986].

File access and the granting of privileges for specific operations are complex topics, and the use of file: URIs can complicate the security model in effect for file privileges. Under no circumstance should software using file: URIs grant greater access than would be available for other file access methods.

6. IANA Considerations

This document does not modify the existing entry in the URI Schemes registry [IANA-URI-Schemes], except by updating its reference RFC.

7. Acknowledgements

This specification is derived from RFC 1738 [RFC1738], RFC 3986 [RFC3986], and I-D draft-hoffman-file-uri (expired) [I-D.draft-hoffman-file-uri]; the acknowledgements in those documents still apply.

8. References

8.1. Normative References

8.2. Informative References

Author's Address