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MacBH928

macrumors G3
Original poster
May 17, 2008
8,257
3,682
Hello, I have an old URL I would really appreciate if you can tell me what they mean:

1) http://health.yahoo.com/ency/healthwise/hw214416;_ylt=AlbEsFLLLdvpqFLcCWvmwvMVzLQF#hw214416-sec

I am guessing that "hw214416" is the webpage (but there is no .html ?) but what I want to know is what is it that goes after "ylt=" . I tried the wayback machine with the string "http://health.yahoo.com/ency/healthwise/hw214416" without the ";_ylt=" and it worked. Can you help?

2) I believe that this has been canceled in HTML5 and replaced by "id=" but I really appreciate it if you told me, to create an anchor you create the tag :
Code:
<a name="xxx"> </a>
, but how do you link to it? Supposedly I have a website called 123.com , do you write : "www.123.com/xxx " ?

If you are curious why I am doing this, I am trying to retrieve archived information reconstructing URLs.
 

theluggage

macrumors 604
Jul 29, 2011
7,463
7,287
I am guessing that "hw214416" is the webpage (but there is no .html ?) but what I want to know is what is it that goes after "ylt=" . I tried the wayback machine with the string "http://health.yahoo.com/ency/healthwise/hw214416" without the ";_ylt=" and it worked. Can you help?

One thing you can do on a webserver is tell it to pass all requests for anything beginning with (say) "http://health.yahoo.com/ency/healthwise/" to a script which, rather than trying to locate a .html file, interprets the rest of the URL itself and generates output accordingly (maybe pulling it from a database). Probably, here, "hw214416" refers to the "page" and the rest are proprietary parameters that customise the page somehow (maybe identifying the user).

2) I believe that this has been canceled in HTML5 and replaced by "id=" but I really appreciate it if you told me, to create an anchor you create the tag :
Code:
<a name="xxx"> </a>
, but how do you link to it? Supposedly I have a website called 123.com , do you write : "www.123.com/xxx " ?

No: "www.123.com/somepage.html#xxx" - leaving out the "somepage.html" if its the "index" page.

...and, yes, "<a name=" is depreciated in HTML5, you'd just add an ID attribute to any appropriate HTML element, but I expect the old way will be recognised for a long time to come.
 
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960design

macrumors 68040
Apr 17, 2012
3,689
1,548
Destin, FL
Hello, I have an old URL I would really appreciate if you can tell me what they mean:

1) http://health.yahoo.com/ency/healthwise/hw214416;_ylt=AlbEsFLLLdvpqFLcCWvmwvMVzLQF#hw214416-sec
http = protocol to explain what to do with the rest of the url
health = subdomain
yahoo = primary domain
.com = top level domain

ency = server folder
healthwise = server subfolder
hw21446; = evil programmer not following any standards
_ylt = function call
AlbEsFLLLdvpqFLcCWvmwvMVzLQF = database call id
#hw214416-sec = anchor tag, that is/was used for AJAX calls. Yahoo sortof started the whole AJAX thingy, which is why the url is probably not 'standard', it was made before there were standards

2) I believe that this has been canceled in HTML5 and replaced by "id=" but I really appreciate it if you told me, to create an anchor you create the tag :
Code:
<a name="xxx"> </a>
, but how do you link to it? Supposedly I have a website called 123.com , do you write : "www.123.com/xxx " ?
I'm a little confused here; _ylt nor # has been replaced by 'id' in HTML5. You do not link to an id. An id is used for styling and javascript manipulations, both client and server side.

If you have a website called http://123.com you would call it using http://123.com. If the owner has properly listed their site with DNS then you could call it with http://www.123.com, but it would not be necessary as www makes a call to the server that 'redirects' to 123.com.

name='xxx'
name is used to identify form elements that should be passed to the server side language using GET or POST. GET appears in the URL and POST is sort of 'hidden' ( not seen in the URL ).

If you are curious why I am doing this, I am trying to retrieve archived information reconstructing URLs.
I doubt the resources ( code ) is still there to retrieve the database information and the database could have changed as well. Even if you guess the new 'format' for the URL, you probably will just retrieve 'junk'.
 
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theluggage

macrumors 604
Jul 29, 2011
7,463
7,287
I'm a little confused here; _ylt nor # has been replaced by 'id' in HTML5.

You have the wrong end of the stick. I think MacBH928 is asking a second, unrelated question here.

in a URL like "http://foo.bar.com/index.htm#wibble" the "#wibble" part refers to a named anchor in the document, and will instruct the browser to scroll the document to show the part containing the anchor. Its used for "bookmarking" part of a page.

Pre-HTML 5, a named anchor looked like:
Code:
<a name="wibble"></a>

Post-HTML 5, the "name" attribute on the <a> tag has been obsoleted, and you are supposed to use the id attribute instead. You can do:
Code:
<a id="wibble"></a>

...if you want, or, since any element takes an ID and they are supposed to be unique within the document anyway, just add the ID to the appropriate element, which makes more sense if you are using the new HTML5 elements like <section> or <article> to structure your document.
 
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