: Confirm if trailing slash is acceptable for a file, rather than a directory I have been reading on here and Google results for a few hours now including this question and the links therein

@Cofer257

The key point to understand here is that a URL is an abstract concept. In fact, they should technically be referred to as a URI (Uniform Resource Indicator, rather than Uniform Resource Locator).

In short, when a browser or user-agent makes a request to a URI, the server can return any content, with any headers.


mysite.com/directory/specific-page/ is OK for a file, right? (with trailing slash "/")


If you mean a binary file like an image, document or zip file, it should be avoided. As described above it's technically possible to serve files this way, but it could be confusing for users. Use an actual file name if possible.

If you mean a web page (HTML file), yes it is fine.


It doesn't necessarily mean that it is pointing to the index or default file in the /specific-page/ folder, right?


Again, you can make the server return whatever you like. It just happens that returning an index.html is the default behaviour on most servers.


Up until now, I always thought that the trailing slash pointed to a directory's index page but that appears not to always be the case, is this correct?


Yes. Apache will usually look for a folder in the specified location but there does not have to be one there if you configure something different via htaccess. And the "index page" could be any file.

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@Rivera981

No, a trailing slash is not acceptable for files.



Unless...

You're going to need to set up canonical names on Apache.

Now, what you're talking about is simply a sort of redirect. A canonical name is simply an alias of another name. So, if you want to reference a file, it would be mysite.com/directory/specific-page/ is an alias to mysite.com/directory/pages/specific-page.php.

Files are always referenced with an extension. The reason for this is because of MIME types, so the browser knows what to do with the file that is delivered from the server.

It sounds like you've been in learning mode for a while now, and I don't want to information overload you, however you might benefit from learning how the client/server relationship works. This will help you visualize exactly what is happening when someone requests your site (thus making all of the other stuff simpler).

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