What does the question mark at the end of filenames mean?

Question

In some project I've met these lines:

$.get("defaults/data.json?", ...);
$.get("defaults/structure.html?", ...);
$.get("defaults/style.css?", ...);

On server side these files without any extra symbols, so I'm wondering what does the question mark at the end of files mean?

Answer 1

The ? in a URL denotes the start of the query string. A ? at the end with no variables following it is usually an unnecessary way of saying "this has absolutely no querystring".

It would be possible with a URL rewriting engine for example, to examine the incoming REQUEST_URI to see if it ends with ? and take a different action than requests not ending in ?, but that would be an unusual usage. It would much more common to just specify some value in the query string.

Answer 2

"?" is the separator for supplying arguments via a GET request.

Answer 3

? states you're providing arguments via HTTP GET.

For example if you want to send a=1 and b=2 , you would do http://mysite.com/myfile.php?a=1&b=2

Shai.