URL with question mark and without

[sammie194]

Question:

How would the action of a browser differ if you asked it to "find the document" at the URL,
http://stargazer.universer.org
as opposed to
http://stargazer.universer.org?

My attempt:

The question mark permits data to be passed from the web browser to the program which generates the web page,
so it will find the document you're asking for, in opposition to the URL without the question mark.

Is this right?

 

[Mark44]

Question:

How would the action of a browser differ if you asked it to "find the document" at the URL,
http://stargazer.universer.org
as opposed to
http://stargazer.universer.org?

My attempt:

The question mark permits data to be passed from the web browser to the program which generates the web page,
so it will find the document you're asking for, in opposition to the URL without the question mark.
Is this right?

The purpose of the question mark in the URL is to denote the beginning of what are called query parameters. Appending only a question mark as in your 2nd example won't do anything, except possibly cause an error response. For more info, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Query_string.

 

[sammie194]

The purpose of the question mark in the URL is to denote the beginning of what are called query parameters. Appending only a question mark as in your 2nd example won't do anything, except possibly cause an error response. For more info, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Query_string.

Thank you! That makes much sense, as the query string isn't there an question mark isn't needed.

 

[Mark44]

The way that browsers work is that when you type in a URL such as http://stargazer.universer.org and press Enter, your browser sends an HTTP (HyperText Transfer Protocol) GET request to the server. If everything goes well, it sends a 200 OK response with a body that contains the HTML markup for the web page.

If you type in the URL with a query string, code on the server processes the parameters in the query string. Everything after the ? character is the query string, which consists of key and value pairs, separated by % character, like so.
<URL>?param1=<something>&param2=<somethingelse>

 

[rezeew]

I would say that your explanation is technically correct. The inclusion of a question mark in a URL indicates that there is additional information being requested or passed along by the web browser. In the case of http://stargazer.universer.org, the browser would simply be accessing the main page of the website. However, if you were to add a question mark and additional information, such as http://stargazer.universer.org?search=galaxies, the browser would be directed to search for a specific topic within the website. So, in essence, asking the browser to "find the document" at the URL with a question mark would result in a more specific and targeted search compared to the URL without a question mark.