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RFC 8288 / WEB LINKING

Context, relation, target and attributes

01

A link is a typed connection: a resource has a specified relationship to another resource, optionally described by attributes.

DIAGRAMRead RFC section 2 ↗
RFC 8288 · § 2EXAMPLE
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Context, relation, target and attributesA fictional book has copyright terms at a target resource. The directed edge is the copyright relationship, not a fetch. The HTTP Link field serializes the target inside angle brackets and required rel parameter; an optional text/html type is only a representation hint. Context, relationship and format are separate roles.A statement about related resourcesRelationship arrow, not an automatic HTTP requestContext: /bookTarget: /termscopyrightLink: </terms>; rel="copyright";type="text/html"copyright: relationship · text/html: format hintThe hint does not verify the target representationFictional GET /book representation, no context override
03
Keep the relationship separate from its format hint.

type="text/html" is an optional target attribute. It is a hint about the target representation, not the meaning of copyright and not verified content.

Source for this drawing: RFC 8288 · Read RFC section 2 ↗

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RFC 3986 URI syntax RFC 9110 HTTP

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Terms in this drawing
Context
The resource the link statement is about.
Target
The related resource identified by the link.
Serialisation
A particular byte format carrying the link model.
Related RFCs and changes

“Updates” changes part of an earlier RFC. “Obsoletes” replaces it. This list shows selected related documents.

What changed
RFC 5988RFC 8288 Appendix C

Clarifies link cardinality, representation-dependent default context and header parsing; removes the unused application-data registry. The model does not make all HTML, Atom and HTTP serialisations semantically interchangeable.

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KEY POINT

A link has a context, a relation type and a target, plus optional target attributes. Context means the resource the statement is about; target means the related resource.

  • A link has a context, a relation type and a target, plus optional target attributes. Context means the resource the statement is about; target means the related resource.
  • A relation describes how resources are connected. It is different from a media type, which describes a representation’s format.
  • Link serialisations are the bytes carrying these statements: HTTP Link fields, HTML links and Atom links have their own mapping rules.
  • RFC 8288 permits multiple links, including between the same resources. It does not give general significance to their order; applications may define ordering significance.
DETAILS

Fictional example: a successful GET of https://example.com/book has no Content-Location override, so its representation URL is /book. Link: </terms>; rel="copyright" states that /book has copyright terms at /terms. The drawing’s arrow is a relationship, not a request or a proof that the terms are correct. Attribute widths are schematic.

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All chapters in RFC 8288

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