What is the character limit on URL
HtmlUrlHtml Problem Overview
What is the character limit for a URL, especially if the URL is formed from a GET method of a form.
Html Solutions
Solution 1 - Html
According to Microsoft it's 2048. Since they invented the internet (and also the light, the darkness and Linux) they are right. :-) .... or.. and since IE forces this lower value, it's the lowest common denominator.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/208427
Under Firefox, I see people on the net reporting URLs of 0xFFFF working: http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=155648&start=0&st=0&sk=t&sd=a
Here is another post which talks about this: http://hiox.org/index.php?id=425
EDIT: this is very sad that almost 5 years after I wrote this answer - it is still true. If you can, look at the history of this answer.
EDIT2: I found a better answer on StackOverflow - https://stackoverflow.com/questions/417142/what-is-the-maximum-length-of-a-url-in-different-browsers
EDIT3: 9 years after - Explorer is deprecated in favor of Edge, Edge soon to be re-designed using Blink (making it very close to Chrome). I wonder how relevant this answer is.
Solution 2 - Html
There is no thumb rule made for the maximum URL size of HTTP Explanation
Get
Request as per RFC 2616 (Hypertext Transfer Protocol — HTTP/1.1 – Section 3.2.1).
Limits are imposed by various browsers and respective servers.
These limits must be considered collectively while passing the query string passed in the URL in any of the HTTP Requests.
If the URL size exceeds the URL Size limit imposed by the respective browser, the request will not be passed to the server & unnecessary effort will be required to debug & handle this situation.
Maximum URL Size By...
Browser
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> 2048 B >> Microsoft Internet Explorer has a maximum uniform resource locator (URL) length of 2,083 characters. Internet Explorer also has a maximum path length of 2,048 characters. This limit applies to both POST request and GET request URLs.If you are using the GET method, you are limited to a maximum of 2,048 characters, minus the number of characters in the actual path. Internet Explorer
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> 100 KB >> The address bar doesn’t shows any characters beyond 65,536 characters. But the URL size can be more than that, though you cannot view it in the address bar. This holds for FireFox 1.5 up until the current FireFox version Mozilla Firefox
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>200 KB >>The URL is completely visible in the address bar even at such a big range Opera
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>100 KB >>Both browsers are webkit based and seems to have almost same limit as firefox Chrome,Safari
Server
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>128 KB >>The size is changed using the LimitRequestLine setting of the server Apache
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>16 KB >>Default value is 16 KB and maximum limit is 16 MB IIS
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>4 KB Lotus Notes
Very long URLs are not recommended at all. Further Information
For a web based application to be cross browser compatible, the
Get
Method must not be used for passing very long strings, containing more than 2000 characters.
If you are facing a situation where you need to use URLs to contain huge number of characters, then give it another thought.
Solution 3 - Html
Newer IE: 2048 characters Some platforms support only 255.
Solution 4 - Html
Different browsers have different limits. But generally the limit is around 2,000 characters for the GET method of a URL. You can use a proxy page that does a POST method (if your API supports it) and that has a larger limit of 5,000 characters. We are currently investigating using a proxy page with the Google Map API as we have crashed into the 2,000 character limit.