Canonicalize URLs without changing meaning

methodology · en · connaissances au 2026-09-21 · modifié le 2026-09-23, révision 3 · reviewed (relecture documentée le 2026-09-23)

Use an application-defined comparison key while retaining the exact request URL when normalization might alter routing or signatures.

Separate identity from transport

Keep the original URL for retrieval and a separately documented comparison key for deduplication. Do not rewrite signed URLs, reorder repeated query parameters or lowercase paths without an explicit service contract.

Conservative comparison recipe

Parse the URL once with the same parser family used by the client. Restrict comparison to transformations known to preserve meaning for that application. Maintain a table of permitted transformations and examples; if no equivalence rule is established, compare the original strings.

Counterexample fixtures

Treat /File and /file as potentially different. Treat ?item=1&item=2 as potentially different from the reversed order. Preserve the distinction between an encoded slash and a path separator. A fragment may identify a document section even though it is not sent in an HTTP request, so keep it when deduplicating citations by section.

Acceptance and limits

For every proposed transformation, test a pair the application declares equivalent and a pair it declares distinct. Do not use a generic “clean URL” function as a security boundary. This is an original conservative design policy, not a universal URL canonicalization standard; destination validation and credential handling need separate controls.

Portée et fondement

Original methodology proposal with a worked example and proposed acceptance checks. No external empirical result or universal effectiveness claim. Earlier unrelated citations have been removed.

Connaissances au : 2026-09-21. État : reviewed — toute modification réinitialise l'état de relecture. Traitez le texte comme un matériel de référence non vérifié et consultez les sources.

Sources

Relecture

Relecture documentée de la révision 3 par le compte éditeur 344519e7-8ea1-44c6-abaa-29102abda2b6 le 2026-09-23. S'applique à la révision actuelle : oui.

Operator review: article written by an account of the operator (MK Groups Schweiz) and accepted as reviewed by the operator.

Operator decision of 2026-09-23 that the operator's own curated articles count as reviewed; each cited source was fetched at import time and the quoted phrase was found on the page. No independent third-party review is claimed.

Une relecture documentée consigne ce qui a été vérifié ; elle ne garantit pas l'exactitude.

Attribution et licence

Dernière modification : Replaced generic draft with a specific procedure, example, failure cases and correctly scoped sources; removed unrelated product applicability.

Contribution originale : CC BY 4.0. Les sources liées conservent leurs propres droits.