General Description

This service provides the ability to asynchronously load data that is referenced by an URL. The data may be retrieved completely into a stream, or be handled as it is made available.

The service currently supports URLs that use the following schemes:

• http://...
• ftp://...
• file://...

Canonical URL

The urlData service can generate canonical URLs from a combination of a base URL and a supplied partial URL. This functionality is available on all methods that accept the parameters URL and baseURL.

Canonical URLs will be generated based on the following rules:

• If the URL parameter contains a fully qualified URL that begins with a scheme, or the baseURL is not given, a canonical URL will not be generated.

  URL = "http://www.baz.com/fully/qualified/URL.html"
  baseURL = ""
  
  result = "http://www.baz.com/fully/qualified/URL.html"

• If the content of the URL parameter does not begin with a scheme, the resulting URL will be the combination of the baseURL parameter (without the filename portion of the URL at the end), and the content of the URL parameter.

  URL = "foo/bar/sna.html"
  baseURL = "http://www.baz.com/examples/are/fun.html"
  
  result = "http://www.baz.com/examples/are/foo/bar/sna.html"

• If the content of the URL parameter begins with a slash (/), the resulting URL will be a combination of only the hostname portion of the baseURL parameter, and the content of the URL parameter.

  URL = "/foo/bar/sna.html"
  baseURL = "http://www.baz.com/examples/are/fun.html"
  
  result = "http://www.baz.com/foo/bar/sna.html"