URL rules

The RFC 1738 lays out the rules for how a URL can be constructed. For example there are some characters that must be URLencoded in order to be in a link. It is possible to see that an embedded web link/URL in an HTML page has not been properly encoded (and therefore makes the whole document invalid). As any URL system is developed including LegisLink, these rules should be adhered to. Furthermore there may be some conventions that should be observed.

And as URLs are often built as a concatenated list of variables (some string, some integer) et cetera, there should be a regular expression given for any URL formalization, especially in an electronic citation system. Having a regular expression above and beyond the one for any URL string is preferable for data validation.

http://www.w3.org/Addressing/rfc1738.txt

(note that Daniel has been working on a method of describing URL patterns and discovery system which uses XML Schema for variable definitions -- see more at http://advocatehope.org/tech-tidbits/repository-schema )