Is an e-mail address a URI?

I've tried to figure out whether the for开发者_如何学Pythonmat of an e-mail address can be said to comply with the definition of a URI or not, but I've found no explicit confirmation of this so far. I hope someone can provide me with some insight here. Thanks in advance :)

Yes, but with "mailto:" prefix.

A URI has this form:

<scheme>:<scheme-specific-part>

The <scheme> is "mailto", the <scheme-specific-part> is the address.

For example:

mailto:max@provider.com

is a valid URI.

Per RFC 3986:

A Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) is a compact sequence of characters that identifies an abstract or physical resource.

The basic syntax components as defined by the RFC:

The generic URI syntax consists of a hierarchical sequence of
components referred to as the scheme, authority, path, query, and
fragment.

  URI         = scheme ":" hier-part [ "?" query ] [ "#" fragment ]

  hier-part   = "//" authority path-abempty
              / path-absolute
              / path-rootless
              / path-empty

So - an e-mail address is not a URI. However mailto:you@server.com is a valid URI.

An e-mail address on it's own - foo@bar.com - I'd say no. A link to an e-mail address - mailto:foo@bar.com - I'd say yes.

If all URL's are URI's then all soandso@somwhere.com address are URIs because they are URLs

So I think an email address is a URI, if it has mailto: in front of it.

https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc2368 https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc1738

yes when used with "mailto" scheme, look here: http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2396.txt

1.3. Example URI

The following examples illustrate URI that are in common use.

mailto:mduerst@ifi.unizh.ch
-- mailto scheme for electronic mail addresses

I think it is, if it includes the "mailto:" schema reference in the address; otherwise not. But as it is only seen at html pages, in the most of cases the email address it self could not be considered a URI.

If you haven't checked before, take a look at RFC3305 document.

The official register of URI scheme names is maintained by IANA at http://www.iana.org/assignments/uri-schemes.html

I hope it helps, Carlos.