Convert URLs to a single canonical form so you can deduplicate, compare, or store them reliably. The normaliser lowercases the scheme and host, removes redundant default ports (:80, :443), resolves . and .. path segments, and percent-encodes any unsafe characters that were left raw — all per RFC 3986.
Optional steps include sorting query parameters alphabetically, removing the trailing slash on the path, and stripping empty fragments. The result is a URL byte-for-byte identical for any equivalent input — perfect for cache keys, deduplication, and SEO canonicalisation.
Two URLs that look different (HTTP://Example.com:80/a/./b vs http://example.com/a/b) point to the same resource. Normalising them produces a canonical form so caches, deduplication tools, and analytics treat them as one entry.
For most servers it doesn’t — query strings are key/value bags. A small number of legacy systems care about parameter order; turn off the sort option in those cases.
Per RFC 3986 §5.2.4: . is removed, .. pops the previous path segment, and trailing dots that imply a directory are kept. So /a/b/../c becomes /a/c.
No — the URL is parsed by the browser’s URL constructor and rebuilt locally. Nothing is uploaded.
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