rootrelative

Rootrelative is a term used in web development to describe a path or URL anchored to the root of the domain. A rootrelative path begins with a forward slash and resolves from the domain’s root directory, not from the current document location or a full external URL. For example, /images/logo.png is rootrelative; images/logo.png is relative to the current page, and http://example.com/images/logo.png is an absolute URL.

In practice, rootrelative paths are common in HTML, CSS, and templating to keep links portable across environments. In HTML, you might reference assets with src or href attributes starting with /. In CSS, a rootrelative URL looks like url('/images/bg.png'). Because rootrelative URLs are anchored to the domain root, they generally remain valid when the site’s domain changes, or when projects move between environments that share a common domain.

Behavioral note: the browser resolves a path starting with / against the domain root. The document’s subdirectory or a base href tag can affect relative URLs that do not start with a slash, but rootrelative paths ignore the document’s location and resolve directly from the domain root.

Benefits include easier maintenance when switching domains or deploying across environments, and reduced risk of hard-coded hostnames. Limitations arise when a site is served from a subdirectory or behind proxies, where resources intended for a subpath are expected at a domain root, potentially causing 404 errors. In such cases, developers may prefer relative paths or helper functions that compute appropriate rootrelative URLs automatically.