'Does .html in the end of a URL mean that the webpage is static?

I know it's not a good question to ask, but sometimes I really need to know if a webpage or website is static or not.

Sometimes I see .html extension in many URL, Does that mean that those pages are static?

htmlurlwebpage


Solution 1:[1]

.html extension means that page contains only front-end code and does not have any server side language included in it (I'm not talking about URL rewriters that adds .html to the end of virtual path).

This does not prevent these things:

  1. Page can load it's content via Ajax depending on inputs, URL params, time of day, etc.
  2. Page can be generated as static HTML page, but still be re-generated from time-to-time.
  3. You can have iFrame in static HTML page that leads to .php file.

Solution 2:[2]

Not really, .html does not mean webpage is static. Ajax can be used to load dynamic data in html page.

Also there is no proper method defined to find whether page is static or dynamic. One way is, you can check requests in Developer Options of browser.

You can read more here.

Solution 3:[3]

No.

There is no guarantee of a direct relationship between a thing that looks like a file extension in a URL and how the server handles things behind the scenes.

It might be resolved using basic static file handling rules to a static file with that name.

It might use a tool like mod_write to map the URL onto a server side script with the same name but a different file extension (e.g. if the site used to be made of static files, but was changed to be dynamic with steps taken to keep the URLs unchanged).

It might use a tool like mod_write to map the URL onto a server side script that has no relation to the name of the file but implements the front controller pattern for the whole site.

It might map onto a server side script which looks at the end of the URL to determine what type of data to return the content in (e.g. cars.html and cards.json might both be be handled by the same script, which outputs a list of cars, but it might output it in JSON or HTML depending on the URL).

It might hit a 404 error or a 302 redirect.

It might do any number of other things.

Solution 4:[4]

Not always, sometimes it can be a generated page from a Servlet or a PHP script that generates them. you can have a .htaccess rule to add .html to all documents.

Sources

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Source: Stack Overflow

Solution Source
Solution 1 Justinas
Solution 2
Solution 3 Quentin
Solution 4 Athosworld

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