There are various differing approaches to the problem of interpreting paths to resources within Web applications, but these can mostly be divided into three categories:
| Approach | Examples |
|---|---|
| Path as filesystem | WebDAV interface to a repository |
| Path as resource or service identifier | A Web shop with very simple paths, eg. /products,
/checkout, /orders |
| Path as opaque reference | An e-mail reader where the messages already have strange and unreadable message identifiers |