URI Syntax

A Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) is a compact sequence of characters that identifies an abstract or physical resource. The generic URI syntax for accessing files and folders has the following form:

[protocol:][//[user-info@]host[:port]][path]

Where user-info in turn can contain the following parts:

username[:password]

URI Examples

FTP

Description

ftp://ftp.deltopia.com/resource

Identifies a folder named resource on the ftp.deltopia.com server. Since no user name or password is specified this is equivalent to anonymous access.

ftp://ftp.deltopia.com/resource.txt
Identifies a file named resource.txt on the ftp.deltopia.com server.
ftp://deltawalker@ftp.deltopia.com/resource.txt
Same as above, but with username deltawalker.
ftp://deltawalker:delta4ever@ftp.deltopia.com/resource.txt
Same as above, but with password delta4ever
SFTP (SSH2)  
sftp://ftp.deltopia.com/resource
Same meaning as with the first FTP example above
HTTP, HTTPS  
http://deltopia.com/index.html
Identifies the file index.html on the deltopia.com server.
https://deltopia.com/index.html
Same as above, this time using HTTPS.

Many FTP servers don't allow setting resource—file and folder—attributes such as date modified. Therefore when files are copied/moved to such servers, they will receive the timestamp of the moment of their creation. One way to avoid such files being flagged as different by the DeltaWalker differencing engine is to set the date modified attributes of the local resources to those of the remote resources. Alternatively, use the SFTP protocol as SFTP servers typically allow greater control including setting the date modified attribute when copying/moving files.

Note that HTTP and HTTPS can be used for accessing files, but not folders. Furthermore, files opened over HTTP/HTTPS cannot be saved back. You can save them either using FTP/SFTP access to the server you loaded them from provided it supports FTP/SFTP, or you can save them locally.

Related topics