Data URLs
LeoSavernik
l.savernik@aon.at
2003-02-06
Data URLs allow small document data to be included in the URL itself.
This is useful for very small HTML testcases or other occasions that do not
justify a document of their own.
data:,foobar
(note the comma after the colon) will deliver a text document that contains
nothing but foobar
The last example delivered a text document. For HTML documents one
has to specify the MIME type text/html:
data:text/html,<title>Testcase</title><p>This
is a testcase</p>. This will produce exactly the same
output as if the content had been loaded from a document of its own.
Specifying alternate character sets is also possible. Note that 8-Bit
characters have to be escaped by a percentage sign and their two-digit
hexadecimal codes:
data:;charset=iso-8859-1,Gr%FC%DFe aus Schl%E4gl
results in
Grüße aus Schlägl
whereas omitting the charset attribute might lead to something like
Gr??e aus Schl?gl
IETF
RFC2397 provides more information.