websites urls without file extension?

Question

When I look at Amazon.com and I see their URL for pages, it does not have .htm, .html or .php at the end of the URL.

It is lik

Answer 1

Traditionally the file extension represents the file that is being served.

For example

http://someserver/somepath/image.jpg

Later that same approach was used to allow a script process the parameter

http://somerverser/somepath/script.php?param=1234&other=7890

In this case the file was a php script that process the "request" and presented a dinamically created file.

Nowadays, the applications are much more complex than that ( namely amazon that you metioned )

Then there is no a single script that handles the request ( but a much more complex app wit several files/methods/functions/object etc ) , and the url is more like the entry point for a web application ( it may have an script behind but that another thing ) so now web apps like amazon, and yes stackoverflow don't show an file in the URL but anything comming is processed by the app in the server side.

websites urls without file extension?

Here I questions represents the webapp and 322747 the parameter

I hope this little explanation helps you to understand better all the other answers.